What Psychos Do
by LittlePorcelainDoll
Summary: I didn't mind killing. It used to bother me, but when the world is built on blood and bullets, it's hard to get worked up for anything anymore. - Krieg/Maya
1. Chapter 1

**Title:** What Psychos Do  
**Disclaimer:** Not mine.  
**Rating: M **for this chapter, the warnings will be listed in each.  
**Warning(s):** Very descriptive violence, blood and gore, and a few swear words. If this isn't your thing, don't read because it's pretty uh… creative. This can be pretty grim at some parts.  
**Character(s)/Pairing(s):** Krieg and Maya  
**Setting:** Before Krieg and Maya even got on the train. A back story to a back story I guess.  
**Notes:** I've been writing Krieg since he came out with the intent to feature him in a chapter of _Passing Strange_, but decided against it. Since Gearbox released a short video called_ Krieg: A Meat Bicycle Built For Two_ (check it out on YouTube to get what all I'm writing about), I fell in love with the ship and decided I should scrap what I had and re-write him and Maya with their own exclusive little story. The narrative style is a little different because I've decided to write Krieg in two ways: one as his inner voice in a first person perspective, and the psycho side of him in third person. The reason why is because I wanted to make sane!Krieg stand out as his own character and follow the narrative style of the video mentioned above with his own thoughts and how he views the world outside of just being a little voice in a psycho's head. I hope it isn't too jarring and reads as well as I think it does. Love it, flame it – I don't mind. Enjoy.

* * *

Somehow, he had managed to find a seemingly endless supply of saltshakers.

They clink in my pockets and roll off my bare chest as my eye peel open slowly, pupil constricting painfully against a shaft of late afternoon light slicing across my face. Salt falls off me in waves and I was buried underneath like a sleeping dad on a beach waking up to find his children had played a joke on him with buckets of sand and seashells for modesty. I was cured meat. I had become beef jerky. Somehow, this doesn't shock me as much as I thought it would.

Somewhere in the back of my mind, he sleeps, but never for long. There are small moments, when the world is at peace and everything is still and yielding, I'm in control. The thought would be comforting but it's the farthest thing from the truth. Control _hurts _and every little resentful ache from the day before cuts through me like a thousand phantom pains. Every bullet that shattered his shield has given me more bruised ribs than I care to count and it's the worst kind of hangover to wake up to.

Slowly, I stand up from the makeshift blanket he seasoned himself to take in my surroundings. Light pours through the open windows of what looks to be a diner judging by the dusty and cracked leather booths. That explains the stupid amount of salt still itching the back of my pants right now. Random trash and splintered remains of tables are all that's left and yet it's still easy to see that it might have been a nice place once. The dark wood floors clean and swept. The mirror behind the bar reflecting the light into the room with a warm glow while customers ate their meals. Maybe the breakfast special was a stack of pancakes with a bacon and eggs smile. Seems like everything on this planet turns to ruins in time.

Bits of glass and debris crunch underfoot as I stumble through the diner in a body that's no longer my own. He's usually awake by now and it's been a long time since I've moved even a pinky without resistance, but longer still since I've actually stood in front of a mirror and somehow, will alone keeps me moving. The mirror is scratched with graffiti and cracked, missing whole parts that have fallen away over time and abuse, but it still reflects clearly the psycho standing before me.

So… this is me. Or what used to be me and turned into _u__s._

It's harrowing looking at the vast gap between who you were and who you are now. There parts of me that are completely _him _twisting and overlapping who I used to be and it's getting harder and harder to see the man I remember. Now, starring at this stranger... I'm not so sure there's any part of me left. A shiver runs down my spine at the thought of losing myself bit by bit as I slowly turn into _this_ and something – some_one_ – starts to stir in the dark secluded corner of my mind and I know with no uncertainty, that he's listening. Good. Time to remind him I'm still here and I'm not going anywhere.

So, you're awake, huh? Hey, you remember what we used to look like? Because I don't. How about we take a look and see what's under a psycho's mask...

My fingers twitch – _our_ fingers twitch – as it meets resistance and it's an almost painful effort to move now, but just as I start to tear off the mask to see who's really beneath, someone starts to whisper all the answers in my ear and everything goes wrong. Very wrong. Malleable and raw like glass made liquid bubbling right beneath the surface of my skull. Needles push slowly under my skin, my throat, my eyes, **my**** mind **and I feel like an insect pinned under a magnifying glass; exposed and twitching. Somewhere, there's laughter, muffled and low, like an inside joke too good to share as a beeping monitor echoes a speeding heartbeat and she starts to –

"I'M READY FOR MY CLOSE UP, MR. DEMILLE!"

And he headbutts the mirror with a savagery that causes the whole thing to crash to the floor into useless shards. I see stars but he just snorts up the blood in his nose and pries up the mask just enough to spit out the bloody mess on the floor like it's business as usual.

Great, I coulda sworn we were close to some sorta breakthrough back there but sure, maybe it's too early for that. Let's find some food, there's bound to be something left in here to scavenge.

He seems to agree for once because he vaults the counter, snatching up his buzz axe as he goes, and kicks down the door to what I think used to be the kitchens. "I'm gonna MOISTURIZE my pores with your bacon grease!"

Heh, yeah. Whatever, just hold the salt this time.

* * *

"This is day one on Pandora," she pauses briefly, her finger almost slipping off the REC. button as she brushes away some stray hair that fell into her eyes. "The major settlements are far from the shuttle station and few, scattered all across the planet. The terrain is harsh and most of the locals travel by train. The next one isn't until tomorrow so I'm on my way on foot to the closest town to rest and ride the train from there. Maybe while I'm there, I'll get some leads about my Siren lineage or at least a point in the right direction to this archeologist I've read about. If anyone would know of a Vault and how it relates to who I am, she would know. Let's hope this works out since it's all I got to go on."

Maya scans the mostly empty shuttle station and notes that not many people travel to Pandora by the looks of it. The shuttle only stays long enough to refuel, the crew wary and armed the whole time. It seems like no one gets off this planet either. If you're not here when it arrives, it doesn't wait longer then it has to. Hardly surprising being how Brother Sophis had called Pandora 'the planet of convicts and cannibals', one of the few things he's said that wasn't dripping in lies. She was the only one on board on the ride out from Athenas until they made a stop at Eden-5, picking up a few shady looking types and what looked to be a teenager judging by the striped leggings. She had her hood up, head down and no luggage; the sign of a runaway. Maya vaguely wanted to strike up a conversation with the girl, it _was_ a really long and uneventful ride after all, but she knows better than most about what it's like running away and let the girl remain inconspicuous.

After a few moments adjusting her ECHO device to Pandora's frequencies and downloading the layout of the surrounding area, Maya decides to get going. The days are long here from what she's read and she doesn't want to walk in it longer than she needs to. With one last glance around the empty station, her eyes catch the copper shine of pigtails bobbing off in the distance before turning a corner and she wishes the girl the best of luck wherever she's running to. They both need it right now.

* * *

After banging pot over his head with a spoon for a few minutes while laughing maniacally, he cleared the mostly bare shelves with a sweep of his buzz axe and he hadn't managed to find much other than an unlabeled tin can and half a packet of stale crackers. Can't tell if they're still any good, but as he starts to hack at the can with his axe, it doesn't matter much. Out here in the wastes, you eat what you can find and it's been a while since we've eaten something that he hadn't ripped the spine out of moments before so it was a nice change of pace slurping down something that wasn't still wiggling. Eating the colorful diet of a psycho for so long, things like expiration dates – and gag reflexes – ain't such a big deal.

Corn beef hash. Nice. Today's looking good already.

Mission accomplished, he plops down on the suspiciously stained floor and digs into the meal without any hesitation and with all the table manners of a starving homeless man who's found a fresh rat. I don't blame him, it's a rare treat and I leave him alone for the time since he's totally focused on his food with occasional mumblings on how this could use some blood sauce and who hid all the saltshakers. It could use come _cooking_ really, but there's no use reminding him.

It's... lonely being the little voice in his head sometimes. Having no one else to talk to, I'm often the one starting the one-sided conversations he wants to pretend he can't hear till he smashes the blunt side of his axe into his face for some silence. Yeah, don't work though. He might be behind the wheel, but there's no ejection seat in this ride. And... it _does_ feel like that sometimes. Watching everything he does through a filter as he steers me around. When he's in control, it's just me in here and I don't even know what he's thinking half the time. It's like sharing a very thin wall with an obnoxiously loud and destructive neighbor; his thoughts muted and separate from mine but definitely there and smashing the furniture.

The now empty can rattles across the floor and he pockets the crackers for later. His movements are slow and idle, fingers tracing the length of his buzz axe like a twisted mockery of a fluffy pet and inspecting each sharp edge and _this_... this I know. He's getting restless and he's gonna hunt soon. Not skag or any of the other wildlife, no. They don't scream enough. He's working himself into a killing mood and there's nothing I can do to stop it. I didn't mind killing before as long as it was to survive, but _him_... he's got a real taste for it. It used to bother me but somehow with each passing day, it's gotten easier to not care after the blood on my hands dries and flakes away. When the world is built on blood and bullets, when existence is a constant state of insanity, it's hard to get worked up for anything anymore. Guilt becomes irrelevant. The fact that I've grown so used to it would be worrying if it wasn't for the fact that all his victims are bandit raiders to begin with. So long as it's not the blood of an innocent victim, I can live with it. _We_ can live with it. It's our compromise and he hasn't broken it, not yet.

Sometimes... I dread the day he might. I try not to think about it much.

He stands, popping his neck and rolling his shoulders as he goes. The buzz axe doesn't stay still for long. It switches from one hand to another before turning in the air and caught once more. If his walk seems casual, it ain't. Somewhere on the other side of that thin wall in my mind, he's maybe thinking about the small bandit camp near the train rail we saw the other day. Five, maybe six of them. They'll have supplies they've stashed away somewhere, likely stolen off of people innocently waiting at the station or by any passerby that had mistakenly walked into their territory. They're all be armed and decently defended, but our axe has seen worse and we're still standing.

My vocal cords constrict and he almost seems to growl at the prospect. "The splintered GLORY HOLES of their eye sockets will taste the sweet, sweEET songs of my prized GOAT!" And without another word, he shoulders open the rotted door, on his way to do just that.

So, I take it we're not gonna talk about what happened with the mirror awhile ago.

This ain't a question because I already know the answer.

"HnnNNG – **PINEAPPLES**!"

Okay... that wasn't _exactl_y what I was expecting, but yeah. Pretty much.

* * *

It's nearly dusk by the time Maya arrives to a town by the name of Rakk Point, but in reality it's nothing but a few buildings, an outpost of sorts before the train station a mile or so away. It seems like a place where travelers stop on their way out to the rest of the wastes that stretch across Pandora, the last breath of civilization before the leap. What passes for walls to keep the place safe are bits of metal sheeting with rusted barbed wire, but in some places, the wire has fallen away either by neglect or by someone actually climbing over it. A couple of armed militia looking guards stand at the gates but neither make any move to stop her, perhaps used to seeing people come and go from the shuttle station. They do however, look at her strangely, openly starring as she passes by. Creepers.

The small town was divided by a wide dirt road with buildings on both sides and as far as Maya can see, it's pretty bare. Food, guns, ammo, supplies, a few shacks for what seems like the more permanent residents and something of an inn judging by the size. A sign on the outside with the words THE HIVE, the 'e' flickering sporadically in the fading light screams its class. It'll have to do. She's dead on her feet from the walk. Stepping inside, she runs into a stale wall of cigarette smoke clinging in the air, but it's thankfully cooler than outside. Music plays softly from a radio on the bar and several men in varying states of scruffiness drink at the few tables crowding the far end of the common room. Two pool tables take up most of the space, their players impatiently chalking up their cue sticks. It could definitely be worse. Making her way directly to the bar, Maya finds an older woman skimming a tattered magazine and hopes the stairs leading up to the second floor are what she assumes to be the bedrooms.

"Um, hi," she says, trying to get the woman's attention. "You wouldn't happen to have any rooms for the night, would you?"

"Yes, ah –" and the woman looks up from her magazine, her eyes wide and taking in the markings on Maya arm. "Oh, mah lord... is you a Siren?"

Surprised, Maya only nods before she can find her voice and she can't form the words fast enough. "Yes, how – have you _seen_ any Sirens? Where are they? Do you know anything about a Vault?"

"Ssh," she shushes with a little flutter of her hand and beckons her around the counter. "Not here. Quiet now an' foller me."

Maya hesitates for a moment, confused at the woman's behavior but one glance around the room alerts her to the stares she's gotten since she walked through the doors. Now that she thinks about it, it's not the usual look some men give to the only young woman in a room. Like the guards at the gates, it's lingering and focused. One man in particular catches her eyes over the end of his cue stick as he shares a few quiet words with his partner, and he too looks up from his shot to stare. There is something seriously off with the people here on this planet. Without another word, Maya follows the older woman behind the counter and through a curtained door, ready for answers.

The room is cramped, yet tidy. A bedroom, no doubt belonging to the woman herself. A cot and a table big enough for two take up most of the space. A dimly lit oil lamp lights the windowless room and her host waves her over to take a seat before taking one last peek outside the door.

"What is it with everyone here?" Maya says finally, her patience wearing thin. "They act like they haven't seen –"

"Ah Siren?" The woman supplies with a laugh. "Yeah, ah w'dn't reckon so. Yer a rarity aroun' these parts."

"So you haven't seen any," she sighs, disappointed. Maya was hoping for... for _something_. Anything! Still... it's only her first day here and she tries to reign in her doubts. She's gone her whole lifetime not understanding who she is or where she comes from, her search is only just beginning and she has more than enough time to spare.

"Ah didn't say that," the woman continues. "About five years ago, ah lived on over in New Haven an' met mah first Siren." She pauses briefly to squeeze herself into the chair across from her. "They say seein' a Siren can change yer life an' gal, it did in spades."

"What happened? Where is she now?"

"She's dead," she says shortly. "Hyperion went an' burned New Haven t'th' groun'. Not many survived an' them that did were nearly all killed later migratin' t'Sanctuary. Glad ah wasn't on that train. Handsome Jack showed up hisse'f fo' that one from whut ah hear. Ah guess havin' a trimenjus robot man kill a bunch of unarmed civilians fo' him gave him th' balls t'show up an' gloat about it."

Dead. Her first time stepping on a planet another Siren has been... and she's dead. Maya's epic journey of self discovery is starting off great. "What about a Vault?"

"Ah cain't he'p you there. Maybe yo'll find th' answers in Sanctuary. Last ah heard, th' Crimson Raiders were still–"

"Maw!" A male voice shouts from the bar and the curtain to the door is pushed the aside. "Jim an' th' boys said they saw a Siren an' were gonna... oh." He finishes lamely once his eyes fall on Maya.

"You hush yer mouth befo'e they hear," the woman warns as she stands, scraping the seat at she goes. "Come an' he'p me git her out th' back befo'e they come back with a posse."

"Wait – _what_? A posse?"

The woman exchanges a glance with her son, clearly surprised. "People come t'Pandora fo' two things, honey. They're either runnin' from th' law o' lookin' fo' th' Vault. Yer a wanted woman an' you just walked into a vipers nest. This here town is full of bounty hunters."

It takes a few moments for the absurdity of the situation to sink in. "_How_ am I wanted? I've done nothing wrong."

"Yer a Siren an' that's enough. Hyperion's put a sweet price on every Siren brought in. Now c'mon, it's dark out an' they might not see you leave."

She's wanted for being a Siren. For simply being _born_. In the Abbey, Maya had trained for years with focus and mediation so she might better herself and be in control of her powers. She had often struggled reigning in her emotions because more often than not, the results were disastrous. "A warrior does not fight with the savagery of his anger, but his mind for that is the keenest weapon," Brother Fletcher had once said after calmly rubbing out the ashes that were his eyebrows. She doesn't consider herself to be an angry person, but now, Maya's wondering if it would have been better to melt his face off to prove just how wrong he really was.

"Let them come," she says at last.

* * *

The bandit on watch never saw him coming.

With one swing, blood sprays out like the citrus mist of an orange peel against his mask and the bandit clutches vainly at his open throat, blood washing over his fingers and pooling down into his collar. Another swing and Krieg buries his axe into his chest deep enough to feel the rapid beating of his pulse slow down in the palm of his hand through the steel and it makes this moment undeniably beautiful in a head in a meat grinder sorta way. The pulse finally fades away too soon and the only sound that comes is a gurgling exhale as he kicks the body off his axe. Krieg breathes in and savors the scent of copper and how it snaps far back on his tongue and _this_... this is better. It's gonna make it _all_ better. Just a little taste, a drop on his axe. That's all he needs but **no**, they're all out there and they all want some too.

Stepping over the corpse, Krieg makes his way over to give them what they want.

Their camp is nothing but a few shacks circling around a bonfire with the partial remains of a skag on a spit, and he counts three – no – four shadows stretching across the desert floor. They're all sitting around the fire eating, talking. All noise to him; the low mumble of voices before the curtain rises. They haven't seen him but everyone's watching. Everyone's waiting for the axe to fall. They don't know it yet but they'll **scream** for the axe and he could almost call it music to his ears only he's not that cliché.

Something buzzes around like a pesky fly banging into his skull, and warns him it's too risky. _T__hey're __all armed and we're outnumbered._ And as soon as Krieg starts to think that this might be a reasonable observation, the more he wonders how well their faces would fit as shoes. Sure, he's got nothing to wear that'll _match_, but it's the comfort that counts. He's been wearing these same old shoes for months and _years_ and he needs something flashy for prom! Since fashion is pain, all thoughts of caution are shoved to the back of his mind as he charges out into the open.

"I'M GONNA TRY YOU **AL****L****L** ON!"

The bandits all jump, cursing as they reach for their guns, but just as soon as the first few bullets start to pepper the air, Krieg's already thrown his axe and it lands with a satisfying _thud _into a bandit's collarbone and he goes down with a shout. Diving and dodging bullets, he makes a wild leap and lands with a solid crunch on his chest and yanks up the axe. One – two bullets bite into his shoulder, but his shield holds strong and the pain spreads through his body like a drug, fueling his rampage.

Run. Gotta keep moving. No thinking now. Just the screams and the scent of blood and gunpowder in the air and everything is a whirlwind of meat and bright colors and drying stains of blood as he cleaves someone's face open like a pinata. They curse and shout out syllables and senseless words and it washes over him like white noise. Nothing else matters but the screams. There are echoing holes in the things he remembers and each scream feels like a key with the biting cut wrong and all he can hear is the lock jamming each time one falls silent and he guts someone open so they don't have to scream anymore.

His breath comes out harsh and ragged when he realizes he's the only one left standing and he wonders where he's left his axe because it ain't in his hands. Krieg fingers the side of his head and it comes away red where a stray bullet just barely grazed him as he surveys the carnage around him. A lone marauder crawls away on the ground, the pointy end of his buzz axe jutting out of his shoulder blade as he drags himself to reach for a gun. That little thief! He's officially outta the will and ain't gettin' any pancake mix now. Krieg casually kicks away the gun and straddles the marauder's back like he's ready for a rodeo and yanks his buzz axe free with a laugh.

The marauder spits bloody curses and struggles against him, still reaching for the gun, and Krieg leans down low enough to whisper in his ear. "You'll make _gooood_ flip flops."

And he bashes his head in until the blood starts to pool impressively on the sand.

_You are one sick puppy._

* * *

Maya steps out into the bar and the murmur of voices die down to nothing. Her eyes scan a group of men crowded around the pool table and she hears the unmistakeable sound of a cocking shotgun. Some of them are wary, but a few others are already counting out the bills in their mind, ready to cash in the bounty. These guys have no idea who they're messing with.

"Them some interestin' tattoos you got there," says the man with the pool stick she had shared a look with from before. "Where'd you get 'em?"

"I was born with them," she says since she's got no reason to hide. She will _not_ be hunted down like some animal. She's trained all her life for combat and she's willing to do what it takes to survive. If they want to risk the wrath of a Siren, so be it. "Is this going to be a problem?"

"Hell, I knew we'd get a real one eventually," he chuckles lightly, nudging his partner in the shoulder like it's his lucky day. "Well, that all depends on you, beautiful," he addresses her and waves the shotgun her way. "Now I ain't the best shot, but I bet I'll ruin that pretty face of yours from anywheres with this. How 'bout you just come quietly and everyone's happy, y'hear?"

With a thought, she readies herself for the worst and the familiar warmth of her power flows through her veins, lighting up her Siren markings with an ethereal glow. "You can try."

The grin slides off his face, and anyone else that was hoping for a payday takes a step back, his partner included. These bounty hunters were used to petty criminals and bandits, easy game and you can always count on your skill with a gun to take them down. But she was a Siren and bullets feel like peashooters in comparison to the unknown powers they wield. They're scared, as they should be, and that price on her head no matter how high isn't looking good about now.

But maybe he's desperate and prideful, or simply stupid, because he levels the shotgun at her head. "Ain't gonna ask you twice."

"Then you will die screaming."

For a long moment, everything was still and uneasy. Nothing stands between them but the bar and suddenly, that empty air of no man's land between them feels like it stretches on for a hundred miles. Her heart beats harshly against her chest, but she's unafraid. She takes a slow breath and clears her mind of everything else and focuses on the clench of his jaw, the way he works his throat, the tension in his wrist... and dives behind the bar as his finger pulls the trigger.

"Dammit, Jim, tha' there's mah good stuff!" The old barkeep screeches as glass shatters behind Maya and showers down on her from above. "Y'all take this fight outside!"

"Put it on the tab!" Jim replies casually as he pumps his shotgun once more. "I'm gonna be rich!"

Three more shots fire in quick succession, blasting away the shelves and dusting every surface with powdered glass. Wood splinters off the bar somewhere over her shoulder and she knows she doesn't have much cover left for long. Two more shots hit the bar behind her and she can feel the very impact of the wood against her back, but she's bidding her time. All she can rely on right now are her powers and those few moments he reloads since she's unarmed. He's going to run out sooner or later.

"Come out, bitch!" He taunts and his boots thud lightly on the floor, coming closer.

Taking a risk, Maya rolls out from cover and tips over a small table, hoping the movement alone will cause him to fire wildly and sure enough, it does. His aim goes high, her ears ringing faintly from the sound, pockmarking the stained wall and blowing a dartboard clear off. A few people run out the door, avoiding the gunfire and clearly not interested in the reward. He curses and the soft clatter of shells hit the floor. _There __– _this is her chance. Time to die Jim.

She stands out of cover, and with a simple gesture, she phaselocks him into the air. He shouts, limbs flailing pointlessly as he's pulled up into the orb. Helpless. At her mercy. But she's run out of it today. The rest of the people in the room back away, some into corners or tripping over chairs as Jim hovers over the pool table.

"This..." Maya addresses the room at large. "... is the power of a Siren."

Another gesture and Jim burns. He dies screaming.

When his body hits the pool table, smoke rising thickly off his scorched skin, she drops her hand and the glow of her skin returns to normal. "If anyone else wants to try and turn me in, I'll be upstairs."

No one replies and without another glance, she turns and makes her way upstairs fearing a bullet in her spine with each step. None do, and it wasn't until she had blindly opened any random door and shut it behind her with shaking fingers did she breathe a sigh of relief. But for how long? More might come looking for her and it won't be just one blowhard with an empty wallet and a bad aim. _What then? _

No, let them come. She's not a child anymore and she can take care of herself.

But sleep doesn't come that night. She spends the next several hours with the echos of Jim's screams in her mind, the door cracked and listening for the sound of his footsteps.

* * *

**A/N:** Sorry for the long note, but I see a lot of fluffy things posted about Krieg everywhere and I wanted to explain why I decided to write him differently. Sure he's funny and he's especially adorable in the video with Maya, but he's a psycho and I felt like I couldn't write him true to his nature without that scary and violent side that some fans look past. It might be cute if he offers Maya a balloon animal made out of intestines as a token of affection, but remember he gutted someone open to get them in the first place. I also took a few creative liberties with sane!Krieg and thought since he pretty much lets on that he can take control when he likes and commit suicide if Krieg ever kills an innocent person, I decided sane!Krieg should be allowed (not many, but few) moments of control here too. This is pretty much for character dissection and plot stuffs for possible future chapters. This was meant to only be a two-shot and in fact, it might be a while till I post the second chapter because The Last of Us is coming out really soon and I wanna wear that out until the novelty rubs off. Depending on the feedback, I might consider writing more than two chapters and just go with a slight novelization of key events in the game with Maya and Krieg and a build up to an actual romance. But that all depends on **you**, dear reader. Let me know what you think! Thanks for reading!


	2. Chapter 2

**Rating:**** M** again  
**Warning(s):** Violence, blood and gore (prolly gonna be a reoccurring thing here), a few swear words, and spoilers for anyone who hadn't seen the Youtube video _Krieg: A Meat Bicycle Built For Two_. Go see it if you haven't already. No really, like right now. It's awesome. **-**_waits_**- **Back? See, I **told** you it was awesome. Gotta trust me in this! Haha, I love our little chats.  
**Setting:**The events leading up to where Krieg and Maya meet at the train station.  
**Notes:**Heads up, this chapter will contain some lines from the above mentioned video. Yeah, some might think that's cheap, but I've already stated that this is a retelling of their meeting so changing things around is just gonna contradict cannon and confuse things and yeah, I'm just gonna do it anyway. Also, anyone who's heard Maya's personal ECHO recording will recognize a line from there too. It fits the situation since in the last chapter, I had her documenting her progress. So... just pointing out that obviously that stuff ain't mine. As always… love it, flame it – I don't mind. Enjoy.

* * *

"Things can _change_, Maya," Brother Harker had said mere hours before she got on the shuttle ride out of Athenas. "_You_ have changed everything. Stay and perhaps the order can be purified and the people thrive once more."

She remembers a flare of anger licking the inside of her chest at the thought of staying any longer on a world so corrupt by the very people who promised to protect it… and the bitter realization that he could be right. Things _could_ change for the better and she could take up the role that had always been denied of her. Truly help people and shape Athenas into better world. It's funny, because in a small and ironic sort of way, she had turned out to be the 'Savior' they had always said she would be. Brother Sophis is dead and the people can be at peace, no longer fearing the Brotherhood.

"The people can look to _you_ now for guidance and protection," he continued and she could not meet his eyes, fearing that seeing the desperation in his voice would become real. "We need you here and now more than ever. Surely, you can not be so selfish as to –"

"_Selfish_?" The very word was laughable. "It was _selfish_ to use me like a tool. It was _selfish_ of the Order to allow this corruption to keep going as long as it did. And if it was selfish of me to put a stop to it all, then you have Brother Sophis to thank for that. I'm leaving."

"Pandora is a dangerous and savage world, Maya. Most that thrive are insane and those who aren't, don't last. You will be eaten _alive_," he had warned, and she couldn't stand there any longer, afraid that he might convince her to stay. She had brushed past him, hand already at the door to the gates when he called out, "When the people rise up and cry out that their Savior has abandoned them, what shall I say?"

She had paused then, a slight twinge of guilt pulling at her heart, until she remembered the faces of the victims she would have blindly murdered if she had never been selfish enough to think for herself. "Tell them... their Savior will return someday. Religions are vague like that, right?"

And she had walked out the front gates and didn't look back.

Now, meditating in that stage between sleeping and waking... she wonders if he was right. That Pandora will swallow her whole and she might not last the day. One day, she'll not be so lucky. A snap of a finger, a wave of a hand, and she'll have two bullets in her skull regardless of all her power. Last night was close. Too close. But no one had dared to bother during the night and Maya did eventually sleep. It was light and uneasy, but it was something. Hopefully, she'll get better rest on the train.

Dust motes dance in the light starting to creep in through the window and Maya sits up on the bedroll, working out the kinks in her neck. The room was spartan and obviously made for more than one occupant judging by all the other bedrolls folded up in the corner of the room, but she was grateful it was clean. How the matron keeps up with a place at her age is quite an accomplishment. Suddenly, the charred corpse on the pool table she had left downstairs comes to mind and Maya sighs, sincerely regretting the trouble she's caused. It's time to get moving and maybe apologize on the way out for what it's worth.

By the time Maya made her way downstairs, the bar was empty save for the old matron, fussily sweeping up the shards of broken glass and splintered wood. The body appears to have been taken away sometime during the night, nothing but a faint black stain left on the pool table remained to mark the passing of a man once named Jim. Maya tries not to think about what happened to it knowing that cannibalism is rumored to be the norm on this planet.

"Uh... hi," she says, unsure what to say now and suddenly sheepish. "Look, I'm sorry about what happened to your bar. "

The woman looks up from her sweeping and shrugs. "Don't worry yo'self 'bout it. Bar fights is like bread n' butter in these parts. Usually draggin' out two or three bodies a week to the skags, ain't no big thin'."

"I thought these men were bounty hunters," Maya says, confused. "Why would they behave like common criminals?"

"Yo'll soon find out there ain't a true north on th' moral compass here on Pandora," she laughs and Maya wonders why the woman had bothered to try to help her in the first place. With the bounty so high on her head, she's surprised the woman hadn't tried to call in Hyperion herself.

"What about you?"

"Guess ah's a bit wiser than some, comes wif bein' old," she winks and sits the broom in the corner. "Ah take it yer leavin' then?"

"Yeah, I'm catching the train north," Maya nods until she remembers that in all the commotion, she hadn't even bothered to pay for the night. "Here," she digs into her pocket. "I... actually, I should pay for the damages. It's the least I can do before I go."

"Keep yer money an' getcherse'f a gun," she shakes her head. "Hope yo' find whut yer lookin' fo' an' mind th' psychos."

Maya stares blankly for a moment, unsure if this was some joke she wasn't privy to until she notes the serious look on the older woman's face. "Psychos?"

"They's th' ones wif th' masks. Keep yer distance, they're known t'bite on occasion."

Masked psycho cannibals. Great, this planet just keeps getting better and better.

* * *

I've lost track of time again.

It been happening a lot lately. One moment, I'll blink or maybe turn my head, and the next moment I'm where I shouldn't be with no memory of how I got there. It would be worrying, but it's the least of my problems. Right now, there's a woman crying quietly across the table from me and I'm not sure where my shirt went.

Her head has been shaved bare like mine, but she hasn't been here long by the looks of it. Muscle still supple and not yet stretched tight, all sharp angles of skin and bone. Her eyes are glazed over and far away, red and swollen, fatigue punched with purple crescents beneath her eyes. She might have been beautiful once, it's hard to say for sure. I figure I don't look like a pin up either, but I guess my time here has been better than some. I've gotten leaner, but stronger, and whatever the lab coats have been pumping into my veins hasn't killed me, not yet.

It's funny what you can grow accustomed to. I used to shudder at the thought that I'll be rolled down the hallways on a gurney, shriveled up and twisted in death like all the others, but lately… I've found myself shuddering at the thought that I might never die. Sometimes... death is its own kind of freedom.

She's still crying, but it's an eerie, silent kind of crying, where the tears are falling but she's stoic and almost calm. I wanna ask her where she's from, what color her hair was and maybe make some other small talk over the sound of the rest of the patients screaming or mumbling into their hands all around us. But words – _people_, really – have never been my strong suit, so I look down and notice it must be lunch time. Aluminum trays sit on the table between us, dolloped with a sloppy mush of whatever passes for food in this place, but it's food and even if it's shit food, I'm starving and it's all I got. I make to reach for a spoon and notice I've been restrained and bolted to the table. A thin chain stretches from wrist to wrist, ankle to ankle and meet in the middle, wrapped around my waist. This is new.

Lacking anyone else around that looks lucid enough, I ask the woman what the chains are for and it takes her a few moments before she replies. "Y-you attacked one of the doctors," her voice is strained and cracked, and she pauses briefly to clear her throat. "It was an hour ago, don't you remember?"

An hour. I've lost an hour. I narrow my eyes in concentration, patiently waiting for the memories to emerge and something pulls at the back of my mind and closes in on itself no matter how hard I try to pry it out. A glimmer, a word, a look. _Something – _but nothing reveals itself and I can't remember a thing.

"No, nothin'," I shrug. Whatever it is they've done to me must be the cause of all these blackouts. "Did I land a few good hits?"

"You... you bit his _finger_ off," she says quietly. "You were a monster."

There's something unsettling when someone calls you a monster. It's a word in kids' books and fairy tales, used often to describe the horrifyingly indescribable and hearing it now sends a shiver down my spine. Me. A monster.

The doctor deserved it; the real monster with a surgical grin.

"Good. Now he has one less finger to poke my brain with." Sounds almost appetizing now. I should make it a habit.

Apparently, this wasn't the right thing to say because her face twists like she's in pain and she starts to sob uncontrollably. Her whole frame convulses as she gulps for air, one hand curling at her ear, as if reaching for the comfort of her hair, the other hugging herself tightly. And for some stupid reason, I feel guilty for somehow upsetting this woman and I have no idea how to make it better. I don't know how to comfort women with sympathy or kind words. Compassion just ain't my thing.

But I try anyway. "Hey, it's gonna …" It's gonna what? Be _okay_? Nothing is ever gonna be okay. Not when we're trapped here with their experiments. It's almost insulting lying to her.

"They're g-going to _kill us_," she hiccups and takes one long shuddering breath. "And – and – I am so s-scared. I _can't_ –" And she starts to choke on her sobs and can't get the words out but I get it. It's a terrifying thing, waiting for death. Every time they strap you to their tables and work on you could be your last. And if you survive that, the pain after makes you wish you hadn't. Her hand darts out and closes tightly over mine, fingertips still wet with tears. But her hand is warm and the barest hint of a weak smile flashes briefly on her blotched face and I just don't have it in me to pull away. "I'm j-just… I _hate_ saying it… but I'm glad I have you here with me."

The realization that I _mean something_ to this woman stabs me right in the gut and I don't know what to say. Her thumb rubs small circles in the palm of my hand I don't know what's worse: that she actually cares for me, or that I can't recall her name.

Something must have shown on my face because she suddenly stills and pulls away, her weak smile gone. "Y-you don't remember me either, do you?"

Somewhere, a beeping monitor starts to echo my heartbeat and I can't think, can't form the right words, bits and pieces of names and faces and pointless conversations start to blur as it beeps faster. Flashes of red hit the back of my eyes like a moving, _living_ thing, and I press the heels of my hands into them until it fades away.

"Uh yeah... yeah, it's just been a long day." I don't tell her I think I've been slowly losing my mind since I got here, I figure she already knows.

"Then what's my name?" A fresh flood of tears streak down her face and her throat works slowly to choke them down. "_Say it_."

She's getting loud and I risk a glance at the Hyperion personnel never far from every door and worry she'll attract attention. "Hey, calm down. They're gonna take us back to our cells –"

"**Say it**!"

Something starts to shift under my skin, behind my eyes, over my mouth as everything starts to flatline and I can't breathe. Like a zombie reflex alive in the mind, my hands start to claw at my face and there's nothing I can do to stop it. Flesh starts to tear as she screams for a name I can't remember and when the skin falls away, all that's left is a mask slick with blood right below the surface as she –

He wakes up with a strangled shout, breaths short and gasping.

It's not often we dream, and this makes the first time we've ever dreamed together. But that was no dream. It was real – _she_ – was real. I knew her once, long before they took my mind with their scalpels and needles and turned me into this. Even now, all the little details of her face start to fade away the more I try to focus. Her eyes, the set of her jaw, the way her tears tracked down her cheeks... all smeared away like an artist's brushstroke; wiped clear and empty. I can't shake the feeling that something important happened at that table and brief flashes of random things break through the surface of my thoughts. The nervous flutter of her hand as it closes over a fork. The sound of chains shifting on the pristine linoleum floor. All indistinct and irrelevant but with the same familiar urgency of _something_ right at the tip of my tongue...

I used to think it was just the experimentation I've gone through that punched the holes in my memory, but lately… I'm not so sure and I'm starting to think he doesn't want us to ever get better. Every time something starts to slowly unfold, he's there closing it up and burying it down with blood and salt. Maybe, there's nothing worth remembering but pain and death. Or maybe, he's afraid to shrink away and disappear to nothing. Hell, I guess I can relate but that don't make it right.

You don't want me to remember, do you?

"Shut UP!" He snaps and rolls over on his side to get comfortable again, but I just laugh because it's so obvious now.

Yeah, I get it now. You think that as long as I don't remember, you're safe. Don't get too comfortable though. You're just keeping the seat warm for me.

"Quit kickin' the seat or I'm gonna TURN this car around and ANOTHER PUPPET LOSES ITS SKIN!"

Gettin' seriously sick of his shit and if I could roll my eyes, I would right about now. Seeing that we're wide awake, he slowly gets up and shoulders the axe. The stars have long ago faded away and light starts to pour in from the open doorway of the shack we crashed in last night. Ducking under the doorway, he makes his way outside and the first thing I see is a corpse of a dead man hanging by the wrist from the remains of some metal ruin. It must've been too dark to see last night and the body was probably meant as a warning to any passerby.

I don't know the dead man. Probably didn't deserve what he got. Don't make him special though. All kinds of people die out here. The innocent... and the not so innocent.

* * *

"...or maybe I'll prove Brother Harker right and take a bullet to the head five minutes from now," Maya adds into the ECHO device. "We'll see how my week goes."

Maya turns off the recorder with more venom than she normally would with a sigh. It's not that she expected everything to be easy, no. But rather, she expected a planet with no visible sun to feel less like an oven. Her morning was rather uneventful. She had looked into getting a vehicle to save herself the walk to the train station, but found the car port locked to her. The Catch-A-Ride station as they're called here, are all apparently monopolized by an obnoxious sounding redneck and she didn't have enough money to register for a runner if she wanted to be securely armed. It was just a minor annoyance, but as the day wore on and the sweat started to trickle uncomfortably between her shoulders and no amount of tugging at her collar gave her relief, it really started to grate on her nerves.

Having finally arrived at the train station, all she has left to do is sit back and wait. The station was nothing more than a small building better served as shade than a station. In fact, it looked empty besides an ammo and gun dispenser and a Hyperion tourist kiosk welcoming new Vault Hunters to Pandora. It went on into vague detail about fame, fortune and all the perks that comes with the job, but Maya didn't buy into it. Hyperion's out there hunting down any known Sirens after all. If her path to find out more about her lineage does in fact lead her to the Vault, then sure. Call her a Vault Hunter all day. But for now, she's got her own reasons for being here. She did however, take Hyperion's complimentary ride for the train. At least they're good for something.

Lacking anything else to do other than stare down the train rail and fan herself, she idly shops the contents in the gun machine for something that catches her eye. Maya knew her way around guns. Not enough to brag about, but enough to know what would best suit her needs and abilities. Back in the Abbey, weapons and hand to hand combat supplemented her mental training on a daily basis and she had always appreciated the elemental aspect of Maliwan guns. Submachine guns in particular. Call it strange, but there's nothing in the world quite as satisfying when a target goes up in flames or melts into a puddle at her feet.

And maybe today isn't starting out so bad after all since she finds just what she's looking for and right in her budget. The build is light and sleek and reloading doesn't seem to be too cumbersome for an SMG. Perfect. She'll have just enough for the gun and a few clips of ammunition and then... well... and then she'll have to find a way to make some money. She'll be low on funds after this, but as she slips the bills into the machine, she guesses a gun is a good investment for now since she can't always rely on her abilities. The gun digistructs into the dispenser as she takes a few more moments shopping for ammo before loading up her new gun and tries not to worry about the fact that it may or may not have been stripped from the corpse of a previous adventurer.

The train starts to finally pull in with a screeching hiss and Maya looks up from inspecting her gun and out of the corner of her eye, she sees some movement in the distance. Curious, she squints and makes out the figure of a man on the ground by the train rail... a man with a _mask_.

"What the hell? Is that a psycho?" Maya takes a few cautious steps down the stairs, unsure. She hadn't ran into any psychos yet, nothing but skags and rakk on the walk over, so she couldn't tell. Could be he wasn't a crazed cannibal after all and gas masks were a fashion here. She might be on a lawless planet, but that doesn't mean she's going to shoot everything that moves. He dusts himself off as he stands and for a long moment, she waits for something – _anything_ – to confirm it.

"I'M THE CONDUCTOR OF THE POOP TRAIN!" He shouts with a wave of what looks to be an _axe_ of all things and that was all the confirmation Maya needs.

Time to test out her new gun.

She jumps the remaining steps, slides into cover and squeezes the trigger. He's more agile than he looks and dodges the first spray of bullets. He leaps into cover behind a boulder and Maya inwardly curses her aim. She hurridly reloads and more blue bullets of electricity break against the stone. He leans out of cover briefly to shake his axe threateningly at her, shouting nonsense she couldn't quite catch over the sound of gunfire. Maya bites back her frustration as she reloads and he pops out a second time to shout out more insanity, and if she didn't know any better, she'd guess he was possibly mocking her. _Really_?

More bullets pepper the boulder, pieces of rock chipping away and _still_, he doesn't press an attack. What the hell is he waiting for? And just as soon as she thinks of maneuvering into a better position and force him out of cover, he all but stands out in the open, axe high in the air and shouts: "TURN AROUND PRETTY LADY!"

Confused, Maya hesitates as he pulls back and throws his axe in a high arc, but his aim is well away from her and … lands with a sickening _thud_ into the face of a man she hadn't noticed sneaking up behind her over the gunfire. Huh, how about that. The buzz saw blade cuts smoothly through flesh like butter, the man still screeching in agony as the psycho charges and leaps onto the man's _shoulders_ to tear the axe out and call it crazy, but she can't help feeling a little bit impressed.

More enemies had appeared without her realizing it seems, because as soon as the body hits the floor, the psycho savagely cuts into the next. They all start to swarm in and he moves like an animal; twisting and turning and laughing maniacally as he swings the buzz axe like a bat, knocking one into the air. Another swing and the blade cleaves into a skull so deeply, the psycho had to kick off the still twitching body to pry it free.

"I WILL PUT MY PAIN INTO YOUR SOUL!" He screams into the face of the last and apparently, that was a lot of pain to handle because the man with rat-like features drops in a feint.

The psycho makes to turn to her, maybe to continue his gory rampage and cut her open. Maybe to simply say hello, she can't be sure. All she knows is that she sees another one of those rat guys creep out of the building and he has no idea. There's a split second where Maya considers not warning him because she doesn't know if he'll just do what psychos do and make practical wallets out of her skin anyway. This is Pandora after all and the moral compass doesn't always point north. For a split second, she considers this... and Maya phaselocks the rat bastard into the air.

Psycho or not, one good turn deserves another after all.

For a moment, he stares at the captured rat screaming in the pulsating orb, perhaps admiring the view, before his gaze catches hers. There's something there, she thinks, no matter how wordless the exchange. An acknowledgment or an understanding of whatever small semblance of trust anyone can make on this planet simply because he had helped her and she had returned the favor. And perhaps that sparked something more tangible than that inside. Real and… _human. _

Then he turns away and hacks at the helpless rat until the blood on the concrete is two inches thick.

Her power spent, the body drops lifeless on the ground and he pries free his buzz axe with some difficulty. The blood drips from his axe and when he turns to face her finally, Maya hopes that his humanity wasn't just imagined. That she doesn't have to kill this man because she's no more than a few feet away from him at most and she's seen his swing.

"I'VE POWDERED MY COCKATIEL FOR THE RIBCAGE SLAUGHTER!" He shouts and she couldn't help but startle slightly but since he's made no move to do anything other than stare at her sheepishly like he's slightly at a loss at what to do with himself... she thinks he might be okay.

A psycho, maybe. And perhaps not _all_ human. But close enough.

* * *

He watches the way a slow smile curves her lips and for once, the little man riding piggyback on his retinas doesn't seem to bother so much. Krieg vaguely starts to smile back until he remembers she can't see it through the mask and shrugs. _Heh, close enough._

"You have my thanks," the Siren says as she holsters her gun and Krieg's just glad to have anything since this hasn't been his best of first dates and getting shot at through most of it was about as fun as banging two babies together except there's no candy. Just babies. "I apologize for shooting at you earlier. I thought you were … ah …" she briefly threads her fingers through her hair and clears her throat. "Never mind, I'm Maya."

_T__ell her my name. C'mon, you know this one, _that voice echos on the surface of his thoughts and as soon as he thinks this would be an obvious thing to do... the more he realizes that since he eats the prettiest of meat steaks, drinks the thickest of blood sauce, snacks on the fear of the deserving and counts _all_ of the calories, the little man has it all wrong. They say you are what you eat and since he's _always_ been meat, sometimes you just gotta cut the liver out of politics and **burn** everything down if you want second helpings.

"I'm the Lord of the Seven Stomachs, Master of Fingerstumps, and Mayor of Meat Town, population... MEAT," Krieg bows in the most dignified way he can manage and ignores the way the little man bangs on the inside of his skull. _Th__is is the__ first real conversation we've had in I don't know how long and you're gonna scare her away. _"WE HAVE MEAT TREES," he adds out of spite. He doesn't have any meat trees. Not _yet_. But soon.

Maya winces slightly at the volume but her smile doesn't falter. "I see," and she actually laughs. It's low and sweet like the first bite of red licorice and somewhere inside, the little man uncoils, clearly relieved she's not running. "I thought you were the con–"

"Hyperion wishes to remind all passengers to check nearby for any forgotten luggage and prepare for departure in thirty seconds," a metallic sounding female voice echoes out from the station's speakers, and Krieg knows that voice all too well.

"This is it," Maya sighs and makes her way towards the door of the train and turns to look back, hand on the railing. "Aren't you coming? I thought you were here for the train before... well, before I shot at you."

_No matter where she goes, follow her._ But Krieg's not sure he should. He went through a lot of trouble breaking out of that Hyperion experimental facility and there's no way in hell he's going to walk into another Hyperion trap. That train could take them anywhere and he hadn't even packed his toothbrush.

_No, l__isten to me. __R__ight now, she's all we have that might help us be a normal human being again. _And maybe that's true, but there are so many worse things than insanity like the taste of her blood and screams pouring down his throat and the slow drip of purple poison and there's no way he's going back to that.

_Wandering the wastes won't make them pay for what they did to us._

But it won't change anything either.

"Departure in twelve seconds," the voice rings out again as the train starts to hum, powering up the engines.

"Mister Conductor?" Maya waves, one foot already on the steps and he had almost forgotten she was there. "Your train needs you, let's get going." The shine of her eyes reflect a thousand sunsets and he thinks maybe wouldn't it be so bad. He's never ridden on a train after all and it might not be such a bad ride in such pretty company.

And he steps onto the train, ready to follow the Siren wherever she'll lead him.

* * *

**A/N:** WHOOPS I did an Animal Crossing reference up there. IT HAS TAKEN OVER MY LIFE. Also, good news! Even though I might have taken longer than I should have to update, I got a head start on upcoming chapters because of all the awesome feedback I've gotten! YAY! You are all beautiful people and I was genuinely surprised that I got such an overwhelming positive response. Thank you muchly. This'll be several chapters long, all the way to the end of the game. It won't feature _every_ mission in the game because then it would just be redundant being that y'all played it, so yeah. It'll have a Krieg/Maya romance, break into my head cannon back story for Krieg and Maya and a smattering of other plot stuffs along the way. From now on, I'll try my best to update weekly if I do 2k word long chapters, bi-weekly if it's 5k words. I'm leaning towards 5k because I've liked the pacing so far. So lemme know what ya'll think! Short and more frequent? Or is the length worth the wait? Thanks for reading!


	3. Chapter 3

**Rating:** **T  
****Warnings:** Tame violence, and a few curse words.  
**A/N:** Heeeey so I'm late for my update. Yeah, ran into a bit of trouble writing out all this and it took some time to just wait out my writers block and get to writing. Hope what I got makes up for the lateness. Can't promise I'll actually ever get my updates consistent, but I'm trying. Anyway, enjoy.

* * *

Maya, despite all her power and training, can't think of everything. Especially now on a planet so alien from hers and nothing is black and white but drying shades of blood on the sands. All her life she's had sense of direction or something to guide her no matter how skewered it was, and now she has nothing but the gun at her hip and a psycho she had all intentions of murdering just moments ago. She hadn't stopped to think that any of the other passengers would object to having a psycho on the train. It didn't even occur to her since everything had happened so fast. The rats, the train counting down and ready to go. Bringing the psycho along seemed like a crazy thing to top an even crazier morning, but it felt like a good idea at the time. And so, as they passed the Welcome Vault Hunters sign hung gaudily above them like a cheesy birthday decoration, Maya is completely unprepared when a man wearing what looks like military fatigues blocks her way.

"We got a psycho on the train!" He calls to the others, and one by one, heads turn in their direction.

She quickly scans the tight quarters, judging the odds of a fight if it came right down to it, and doesn't like the result. They're all armed to the teeth, one man in particular sports bandoliers as if he _ate_ ammo, and another is armored from head to foot with a sword folded across his lap. The door shuts behind them as the train starts to move and there's no going back even if she wanted to. The psycho senses the same danger and Maya feels him tense at her side, his grip tightening on his buzz axe, and she risks a hand on his shoulder. The last thing they need is a confrontation and if he screams something crazy, she can't be sure the others won't start shooting immediately. He stills and seems to relax under her touch and thankfully, doesn't try to bite her fingers off in the process.

"No, it's okay," she holds out a hand, the universal gesture of a yield, and tries to explain. "He's not like the others. He's _safe_." Or as safe as she thinks he can be.

Promises are easy to make and simple to keep with your eyes closed and she knows better than to trust someone she met not minutes ago, especially a man who slaughtered five people with their blood still drying on his axe, but it's either get shot or hope he won't prove her wrong. She _doesn't_ trust the psycho, not completely, and she can't be sure he's entirely safe, but she's spent all her life being told what she couldn't do and he has the right to do what he likes just as much as she does.

"Psychos are risky; an unpredictable foe. We won't take the chance," the man with the sword stands with the juvenile acronym **GTFO** flashing a mocking red on his faceplate and Maya has to restrain herself from rolling her eyes.

"Exactly," the other grins. "_You_ on the other hand… can stay," he adds with a roguish wink and Maya _does_ roll her eyes at that.

"_This –_" Maya points up towards the sign above her head. "– says it welcomes Vault Hunters. We just so happen to be Vault Hunters and I don't see any fine print saying he's not allowed."

"Eh... she's kind of right," the man with the bandoliers speaks up and it takes Maya a moment to notice the way his feet barely touch the floor. "Besides, I've seen nomads keep psychos like pets before –"

"He is _not_ a pet." Just when Maya thinks this planet can't shock her, there's this and no one looks surprised. She doesn't even know how to articulate her disgust that people would do that kind of thing and the psycho starts to quietly laugh at her side, as if he couldn't care less and even goes so far as to lean in closer just to whisper a breathy growl at her ear. "_Seriously_?" Maya hisses at him. "_You are not helping __my__ case here._"

"I'm on your side," the short man continues with a shrug. "I'm just saying they can't all be so bad."

"Yeah, 'cause that makes perfect sense," the commando snorts. "So, do we gotta house train 'em too?"

Maya's temper flairs at the _nerve_ of this asshole and before she can get a chance chew him out, copper pigtails pop up over the edge of a seat and Maya briefly recognizes the teen on the shuttle with stripped leggings. She looks more or less the same, a few new scratches and her sleeve looks torn, but alright. If the girl remembers her, she doesn't let on that she does.

"Chill, Axton," the girl says as she hangs over the back of her seat. "I say we vote on it."

"This isn't one of your little high school debate clubs," Axton chides. "We're not gonna –"

"All in favor of voting on it?" She shoots her hand up in the air and gives the short man across from her a sharp look before he raises his hand up too. Maya is more than happy to play along and nudges the psycho to follow her example and he gives his axe a little shake. "Sorry," she frowns sympathetically after glancing at all the raised hands. "Majority rules. Look's like we're voting."

"Gaige, we're not being unreasonable here," Axton says seriously, and Maya understands more than anyone since they're right worrying about the dangers of having a psycho on board, but it's far too late to talk like that now after his flippant attitude. "This guy he's… is this about that loot chest I saw yesterday, 'cause if it _is..._"

"_No_!" Gaige snaps. "And you and I both know _I_ saw it first. If it weren't for those spiderants – whatever. Yesterday was years go, I am so over that."

"Don't look like it."

"All in favor of letting the psycho join our team?" Gaige raises her voice over Axton's, her arm darting up in the air again. The same number of hands outvotes Axton and the silent, helmeted man's only reaction to all this is a noncommittal flash of ellipses across his faceplate. "Ouch, too bad guys. I guess he stays," she sucks her teeth gives a little 'whoops' kind of shrug before patting her seat excitedly. "Oh! I call dibs, he sits by me."

"And the victor REAPS THE MEATY SPOILS while the loser looks on with hungry envy," the psycho strolls past the commando and pauses briefly to blow what Maya thinks is a raspberry, its effect slightly diminished by the mask, and she struggles to keep from smiling.

"Oh great, I'm glad we're trusting this guy," Axton sighs to the helmeted man who simply shrugs in response and sits back down, the sword neatly across his lap once more.

"No hard feelings?" Maya holds out her hand. Despite Axton's reaction to her choice in traveling companions, he doesn't seem like such a bad guy. He was simply looking out for everyone else and she can appreciate that now more than ever. "I'm Maya."

"Axton," his hand slips into hers with a slow smile. "Welcome to the team, Maya."

* * *

I remember a time I would've rather pried off my nails with a rusty coat hanger than exchange small talk with anyone and the hours would stretch on where nothing needed to be said and everything was simple. Now, I'm surrounded by people we haven't gruesomely murdered for a change and there's so much to say but the words stick in my throat, lost and twisted in translation by the maniac that's taken over and scribbled crude caveman drawings in my mind.

I _want_ to talk to them, know them, have a real conversation that doesn't include spitting random bloody syllables into the inside of my mask but life has a passing strange kind of irony to it all and I _can't. _It's a strange feeling, being in a room full of people and not one of them is aware of my existence. They talk to me, look at me, but it's not me. It's this version of me raving about meat and intestines and… it's the first time I've ever truly felt insane.

The others don't seem to mind, or at least don't show it. Confusion might wrinkle Salvador's brow, but he'll just laugh it off with some broken English, maybe sympathetic since he's stuck in the same kind of verbal lag sometimes. He's got that look of a native; full of extremes. Extremely short, extremely beefy, and no middle ground. His weapons are a mismatch of spare parts bandits salvage and made their own and it's not a far stretch to believe he might have been a bandit himself. On this train it don't matter much. He's still a bandit, just tipped the scale to the opposite extreme. Guess I can't judge.

The helmeted man, Zer0, is far less patient with our outbursts and in the last few hours hasn't spoken to us directly, which is fine by me. Despite all the poetic mystery he excretes from every nick on his armor, he's about as interesting as a grammar lesson and there's something about him that rubs the psycho in me the wrong way. The rigid posture, how inhumanly still he sits. It took all my restraint to keep from leaping on the slender mans' shoulders and cracking his helmet open like a fresh egg to see what spills out. A million different theories of what could be inside flowed from my mouth instead. A meat grinder, a single giant eye, a beehive to name a few. It lasted a while until Zer0 had as much as he could stand and joined the commando down the train car. Can't say I blame him, but ain't all that bothered to try to force out an apology either. Doubt it'd come out right anyway and might end up insulting the guy's headgear and get run through for the trouble.

The teenager, Gaige... there's something about her that reminds me of someone I used to know. The rhythm of her voice, all full of spunk with a mischievous streak miles long without being obnoxious about it. She talks with her hands and her whole face lights up with a thousand different expressions and even if it's just all geeky stuff, watching her is entertaining. And she talks _a lot_. Enough for the both of us and she'll sometimes pause at whatever random thing that comes out of my mouth, but laughs nonetheless. The psycho in me likes her, I think. There's no real need to be understood or say anything at all and it's almost like being normal.

Maya's laughter drifts softy over the dull thunder of the train speeding past the scenery, and Gaige's idle chatter tunes itself out. She's a few seats ahead, back against the window and facing Axton in the seat across from her as he gestures whatever tale he's spinning. He's got that con-man kind of personality; good looking and charming. Knows just what to say and probably ain't certifiably insane. That don't make him special though. Cute jokes and perfect hair don't deflect bullets and –

And a sharp slap stings the back of my hands.

"Too slow!" Gaige laughs and settles her hands back under mine. Somehow in the past half hour or so, she had managed to convince the blood thirsty psycho to play a childish game of slapsies and she's been kicking our ass. "C'mon, big guy! Bring it!"

My throat works out frustrated growl and my attention is torn away from Maya. Salvador's been keeping score and we're one round away from being the Bitch Slapping Champion of the World. The psycho's convinced that the title comes with a championship belt made entirely out of sausage links and I didn't feel like correcting him. It's been more than a few hours since we've killed something and anything to pass the time is welcome right now.

"Get ready for the slap heard 'round the wooorld," she says theatrically as her fingertips tease my palms, trying to trick us into flinching away early.

The low murmur of Axton's voice mingles with Maya's and – **no**. _Focus_, don't look at her. Look down. Look down and don't flinch. We're not gonna let a teenage girl walk away the champion are we?

"HnnNG her lady fingers can't touch me! I am INCORPRIAL; the monster under the bed, the red mist on the walls of your agony and I WILL WALK TALL WITH THE BLOOD SAUSAGE OF VICTORY!" Attaboy, that's what I like to hear. Sort of.

"You are _so__oo_... intense," Gaige says, her brows knitting briefly. "I like that." And the sharp claw that is her left hand pinches my wrist, causing me to flinch away and for that brief second, she harshly slaps down my right hand. "Haha! Hell yeah!"

What!? No pinching, that's cheating.

"Cheater! Cheaters NEVER get any gold stars!" My head snaps around to Salvador for backup. "She cheated!"

Salvador, who had apparently been dozing the whole round, instantly perks in his seat and rubs his eyes. "Sorry, amigos. I was uh... blinking. Rematch?"

"Okay, okay," Gaige gives in."We'll do it over you tattle tale – _one handed_. No superior robotics this time, wouldn't want you to feel _cheated_."

"Watch out, pal," Axton calls down from a few seats away, having heard the commotion. "She might look sweet and innocent, but she'll cheat ya twice if you let her."

_Pal_? Oh, so now he's being friendly. Hey, tell Mister Pretty over there that his hair wasn't invited to this conversation. "This is MY MEAT CIRCLE and you are NOT kosher!"

Axton's look of bewilderment brings out another laugh from Maya. "Did he just –"

"Attention all passengers," a female voice rings through the train's speakers. There's just no getting away from that bitch. She's recorded everywhere. "You are now approaching your final destination..."

"Good," Maya sighs and sends a smile my way. I still have no idea where we're heading, but I'm prepared to follow wherever she goes. "I've been needing to stretch my legs."

"Death," the recording adds and there was a cold finality in that one word, despite the lack of emotion. "Have a nice day."

"Wait, anyone catch that?" Axton frowns, confused.

"It said, 'have a nice day'," Salvador supplies.

"I got _that _part, I meant –" and he pauses as a familiar metallic sound of grinding gears reaches the double doors of the train car and the blood runs cold in my veins. Hyperion Loaders. More than one judging by the heavy footfalls. The rest start to hear it too and slowly rise from their seats. "Everyone split up at my signal," Axton says quietly.

"What's the signal?" Maya asks as doors slide open.

"Don't die."

* * *

Do not use fingers to stop chainsaw blade. Remove infant before collapsing stroller. Do not get on a Hyperion train unless suicidal. These are all the black and yellow warning labels people should know, but somehow don't.

As the welcoming sign drops away to reveal one far less welcoming – _but not personal_ – Krieg ain't all that surprised. He felt it the moment he stepped on the train like a knot in his gut; a twitch under his eye. That feeling you get when you're not supposed to be somewhere, like a meat locker filled with human corpses or the thirteenth floor to another dimension. Just something off and unsettling and now they're here to try to take him back and if it wasn't for those pretty eyes he wouldn't be here right now. He told the little man this would happen but _no_, no one ever listens to him and yet he's the psycho one in this parasitic existence.

_Yeah, you were right __and I was less right. Rub it in later and start killing. _

Krieg is only too happy to oblige as the Loaders stomp into view. He's never liked Loaders much. They don't scream, they don't run, and oil makes a poor substitute for blood. Nothing beats the real thing but his axe has been hungry for hours and the clash of metal on metal sounds like a feast. Time to put a quarter in the blood jar and make some nipple tassels out of circuit wires.

They all split, opting to make it harder to get mowed down in such tight quarters. One moment, the assassin was at his side, and the next, he's leaped up out of the train car through an opening on the ceiling. The short man rips open one of the side doors and climbs out as the commando flings out a turret at the incoming threat. Not wanting to leave the Siren's side, he keeps his back to her in an effort to keep her safe, only to find more of them pouring in from the other end. Krieg sprints down the train car laughing maniacally, and somewhere behind him, the impact of a rocket launcher shakes the floor. His axe screeches against the nearest Loader and sparks start to fly as the buzz saw cuts into the metal. He pounds the lumbering thing into the next train car before tackling it altogether, knocking the incoming conga line of Loaders back where they came from.

"Need some help?" Krieg looks back from the pile of robotic limbs awkwardly trying to stand and finds the teenage girl standing in the doorway, gun outstretched and crackling with electricity. "Let's start the anarchy!"

It's decided. Krieg could learn to like this girl if she'll give him axes for arms and he'll let her cheat whenever she wants at slapsies even if it wouldn't be practical slapping someone with buzz saws for hands. Details though. She talks smart enough to maybe figure out how to work around that. Best. Friends. Forever.

_Heh, cute you're making friends but... _

Right. The bloodless metallic husks need spanking. Buzz axe arms will have to wait. Sparks and bullets fly as electrical wiring break through like gory veins with each swing and Gaige keeps pace at his side, peppering the shiny yellow metal with equal ferocity. Each one that drops, another rises and just as he thinks it's starting to get good, the heavy footfalls of a twelve footer sporting six arm cannons breaks through the crowd.

"Shit," was all Gaige could say before half a dozen homing missiles kiss the floor at their feet.

The explosion was a deafening blast of metal and bright colors and suddenly, his feet can't find solid ground. Shaking off the daze, he scrambles for something to hold onto as a piercing cold wind buffets against his side. His hands find a scorched and still burning shard of metal and he clings to it like a lifeline. He glances down to find the ground speeding below him a good fifty feet, nothing but a brown and white blur. It takes every ounce of strength to hold on and the extra weight of the teenager clutching at his waist isn't making it any easier. She looks alive, but just as dazed as he is.

_Tell her to climb! _

"GOOD GOD, WHERE'S MY SNOW HAT!?" Krieg shouts instead over the freezing wind.

"WHAT?"

_Yeah, f__orget your snow hat and tell her to climb up __**now**__! We're slipping!_ Indeed he was; his hands are slick with blood as the sharp edge of the metal cuts through his flesh and tear down his arm. He won't last much longer with the girl's added weight.

His growl of mild annoyance is stolen by the wind. "I MAKE A GOOD MEAT LADDER!"

"_WHAT_ – NO! WE BOTH WON'T MAKE IT!" She shouts up at him and it takes him a full second to realize it, but the girl starts to loosen her hold on his waist and he risks letting go of one hand to grip her tightly. "LET ME GO! _TR__U__ST ME_!" She pleads as she tries to pry his arm away. With her clawed hand, she pinches his sore ribs harsh enough for him to cry out and he instinctively pulls away, flailing in the wind until both hands grip the lifeline again.

No longer restrained, her arms fall away and she disappears into the blur of snow flurries. Gone.

For a few seconds, he can't think. Can't breathe. Nothing exists but the dull roar against his ears and the distant sound of gunfire and Salvador's laughter. He would've gladly exchanged places with her in an instant. She didn't deserve to die. Not again and not for him.

_We're still alive_, the echoing voice on the surface of his thoughts reminds Krieg grimly. Right... monsters never die. He swings his body and finds a foothold into the underside of the train. Twisted shards of metal and debris have all but covered where he dropped from and there's no going back. Laboriously, he works himself to the side of the train and finds a less painful, better place to grip. A gaping hole yawns out of the train ahead, likely done by a rocket launcher or maybe even his Siren and he inches his way towards the opening, buffeted by the wind. By the time he pulls himself over the jagged floor, the assassin drops from the ceiling above him, all neat and eerily still and it looks as if the gunfight has died out. The others look battle worn, but relatively unharmed and Maya helps him to his feet.

"You're bleeding," Maya points out, concern written across her face. "What happened, where's Gaige?"

And Krieg doesn't know what to say. There are no words to describe the way the girl dropped away from him, melting into the speeding tundra below. But before he could even try coming up with anything vaguely coherent, the others look past his shoulder. Krieg turns, squinting against the wind blasting in from the open mouth of jagged metal, and there's the girl. Back from the dead and riding piggyback on a hovering torso of a monstrous looking robot.

"DID I MENTION I HAVE A BADASS **FLOATING** ROBOT!?" She grins their way before falling back, struggling against the slipstream. She resurfaces again and flails an arm out for someone to grab hold. "DON'T JUST STAND THERE, HE'S NOT MEANT TO GO THIS FAST AND WON'T LAST LONG!"

Zer0 and Axton both easily pull her in before the robot disappears into nonexistence. The girl falls into Axton's arms and he thumbs away a smear of blood on her cheek. "Glad you're okay, kid."

Gaige fingers the cut at her cheek gingerly. "Aww, you _do_ care!"

"Can we move on now? We must pull back the curtain," Zer0 nods towards the next train compartment. "Kill the bitch behind."

"He's right, let's find out who did all this and get off the train," Maya agrees.

And there it was again. That knot in his stomach. That twitch under his eye. Blood and meat are wonderful words, but shrapnel is shrapnel at the end of the day and he can see the mushroom cloud rising beyond the door. There's something there that shouldn't be opened and they're all walking straight towards it. The colors of the apocalypse are beautiful and he wants to live long enough to see a rerun, but his Siren doesn't smell it coming and there's nothing he can do but follow in her footsteps. _Keep her safe_, that faint voice rings in his mind and Krieg vaguely muses how long he'll be able to at this rate.

The commando pauses briefly and glances back to check if they're all ready, and kicks open the door.

* * *

Maya didn't know what to expect when the door slammed open. More enemies maybe. A chance to stop the train safely before it starts falling apart around them. That at least that sounds doable. But as her eyes scan the room and land on the lone man sitting casually in a chair surrounded by dynamite, she knows that their chances of survival aren't looking good right about now. Piles of dynamite are stacked through the whole train car haphazardly and the chair turns slowly to face them.

"It's cute that y'all think you're the heroes of this little adventure... but you're not," a voice drawls, and for one wild moment, she had almost mistaken the dummy in the chair for the real man. Handsome Jack, the very man who's hunting down all known Sirens. And now, he's here more or less to blow them all to hell judging by the ticking time bomb strapped to the dummies chest. "Welcome to Pandora, kiddos!"

And the world slows to a stop.

This is your death Maya. You are going down in a blaze of glory and shrapnel with an assorted group of near strangers, all outcasts and maybe killers.

_What have you done with your life? _

Underdeveloped and faded to a sepia like film, she thinks of the Abbey. Of its high walls, solemn prayers, and comforting bells counting away the hours. Of Brother Sophis, tall and imposing, but always with a gentle smile when she'd run back from her lessons bursting with excitement. She loved him once, as much as any child could for an adoptive sort of father before she grew to realize what kind of man he was. Looking back, she's not sure if he ever truly cared for her, it's hard to say for sure.

Scenes of a former life long ago flicker up to the surface of her thoughts and she thinks of the few times she's run from the Abbey to seek adventure and the lone friend she had once made in the village, a young boy with the scent of honeysuckle in his hair. That summer was beautiful and the first kiss they had shared, innocent and pure, had tasted of sweets and hot chocolate. Their noses kept bumping and his laughter was like a song, full of life and crab apple blossoms. She wonders what became of that boy and if he remembers her now.

And now, all she has left – all that she _is _– is a list of unanswered questions and all she has to show for it is a two day stint on a murderous planet and more questions. _Child, you have so much left to learn_, Brother Sophis had said before Maya pulled the trigger. And he was right. She has accomplished nothing and learned nothing and now she is going to die.

"Run," the psycho says in her ear and the world comes speeding back into focus.

Maya shakes off her fears. "Everyone, get back and take cover!" And they retreat into the last compartment, trying to put as much distance between them and the dynamite as possible. Maya slams shut the door behind her, they have at best a minute before the bomb can go off and anything, even a door can make a difference.

Only they don't have a minute.

She hears the explosion before she feels it. A great thundering clash of metal that screeches and presses in all around her followed by an intense wave of heat. Arms envelope her, shielding her from the worst, and a psycho's mask comes into focus. He tucks her under his chin and then... weightlessness. Floating. The train car turning. Flashes of light, scenery, and her teammates as they're thrown; spinning into space. Bits of sound break through the ringing in her ears. A stunted scream, a groan of pain. It's a chaos of limbs and metal and she couldn't tell which way was up or down but she's not afraid anymore, just waiting for it to be over. Something knocks into the back of her head and she cries out as the train hits solid ground and suddenly, she's torn away from the safety of his arms.

And everything goes white.

* * *

**A/N:** Juuuuust shy of 5k and not entirely happy with this chapter, but eh. I tried. Went a bit AU with the opening cinematic (obviously) and decided to focus more on Krieg and Gaige since y'know, we don't see them in the cutscene. I promise more interaction with Krieg and Maya in the next chapter. Suggestions? Comments? Requests? Death threats? Lemme know what you think! Thanks for reading!


	4. Chapter 4

**Rating:** **M-ish?  
****Warnings:** A few curse words, but there's some disturbing stuff that makes the rating an **M** I think.  
**A/N**: So I'm back! Had a few health problems and I'm finally over them enough to update. This chapter is dedicated to the people that wished me well through all the crap I was going through while I was laid up. So sorry for the long absence. I hope to get back to updating regularly in a weekly/bi-weekly schedule. Anyway, enjoy!

* * *

Cold.

Ice cold. It seeps into me and claws its way deeper with every breath. It burns into the base of my skull and snaps my eyes open and all I can see is white. White walls. White floors. Sterile and bare. All hard lines and sharp angles; minimalistic corporate. The beep of a monitor never far away and I'm here again, strapped in the good doctor's playroom with his needles and mind games.

My senses are dull and floaty with drugs, but I still manage to smell him before I see him. His breath forever smells of menthol, sickly fresh and strong enough to make the eyes water whenever he leans close. The clink of a cough drop often hits the back of his teeth as he swishes it around and as soon as he's worn it down to nothing, it cracks under the pressure and a wrapper crinkles with the sound of a new one. Grown so used to it, I could maybe time the next one he'll slip out of his pocket if I wanted to.

He wheels into view on a swivel chair and he looks by all accounts, a normal doctor. Clean and professional. Lab coat pressed with a pen and notepad in his lower pocket. Maybe even good looking in a bookish sort of way. He thinks I can't hurt him here. He thinks this room is his palace and I'm nothing but a lab rat to play with while he documents the results and strapped to this chair… I guess he's right. And he knows it too. But he's human and breakable behind the sheen of his glasses and he's _not_ untouchable. Get him on the ground and one foot could crush his windpipe. Strangle him with his shirt sleeves and he'll turn blue just like anyone. Used to think hell is something you carry around with you; locked and hidden away in the dark corners of the mind. Then someone comes along and unlocks the terrible things inside and hell, it's hard to feel guilty about these morbid and gory fantasies. They're the only things that keep me going when nothing else will.

The good doctor fills up a syringe with my usual poison and I picture the way his insides would tear so easily, twisted around my fingers in a Jacobs Ladder.

"I like to think we are friends," he says and a gloved finger flicks the syringe. Small bubbles rise up to the surface and his face stretches into a rabid-dog smile; slow and unnatural, showing far more teeth than the human face should allow. And I wonder what I always do: how many teeth he'd lose if I ever got the chance to slam his face into my knee. "It may not be strictly professional of me, I know. But I have grown a certain kind of fondness for you over the past several months."

I say nothing and ignore him. He'll get bored listening to himself talk, do his thing, and maybe I'll live today. Or maybe I won't and that's fine too. Ain't got much to say about it anymore. I talked in the beginning, sure. I begged him to stop. I begged him to stop until I prayed he_ wouldn't_ stop and finish the job and then I stopped talking altogether. Used to think it'd encourage him to get it over with faster, but it don't. Men like him, evil men, like to put off murder like a fat kid would put off the very best sweet for last.

"We know each other so well… yes, I think we are friends," he continues and he's right in a way. I know more about him than I care to. I know he has two kids, a supportive wife and a cat he tolerates. He's shared pictures of them before the drugs kick in like a proud man would at a family reunion. Girl and boy, both with his smile and a pretty woman on his arm. And god help me, but I want them dead. I want him to walk in his home with their corpses on display like a macabre flower arrangement; his wife's head as the centerpiece. Greeting card signed in blood. Cat lapping up the mess. "But even friends fight occasionally, don't they?"

And he holds up his left hand, fingers spread, and grins through the bandaged gap where his ring finger should be. Heh, so it was _this_ doctor I had a taste of this morning. I laugh. Laugh long and hard 'cause its been ages since I've had good reason to and my breath fogs up the chill air.

So damn cold in this room... when did it get so cold?

"Yes, we can laugh about it now," he says although he's not laughing and I manage to turn my head slightly under the restraints to gauge his reaction. His face gives nothing away as his fingertips, cold as ice, gently prods the bottom of my right eye and a sense of dread washes over me. This is not the usual routine. "And yet, I imagine my wife will not laugh when I have to explain why I can not wear my wedding ring. She is so... sensitive, you see. I do try to keep her happy."

This new fear breaks my silence. "What're doin'?"

The doctor's smile fades as his mouth works around the cough drop and a sharp crack fills the silence. "I'm curious what a direct full dosage will do to your eye," he pauses briefly to fish out another cough drop from his pocket and the crinkling wrapper comes undone. "At best, I suppose you will go blind in that eye. At worst... well. Let us hope for the best."

Part of me wants to scream. Tell him to stop. Somehow bargain my way out of it but I've learned that you can't bargain with insanity. There are scars on my body that won't ever heal and I want his hand to slip, wanna arch as far into the needle as possible and hope by some goddamned miracle, I'll be too damaged to work and he'll have to toss his broken toy aside. So I don't struggle or say a word as the good doctor adjusts the overhead light onto my face and it burns into my retinas, hopefully the last thing I'll ever see, until a man comes into focus leaning over me.

A man with a _gas mask._

Haven't seen him before and yet there's something familiar about him that makes an uneasy feeling sink right into my gut and sit there. Blood streaks down his throat from whatever horror is hidden under the mask and I want the doctor back. He laughs, low and almost gurgling and it echos like sin in a roomful of god as he gives the syringe a little twirl before jabbing it right in my ohgodWHYAREYOUDOINGTHISJUST LET ME DIE

And everything goes white.

Snow white.

I'm sprawled out on solid ground again, back in my old skin and everything hurts, screaming for attention. In seconds, everything that's happened in the last five minutes catches up to me. Hyperion Loaders, danging from the underside of the speeding train, the chair slowly turning, Maya's eyes as metal and fire turn all around us and –

"Maya."

* * *

Something wet slaps across her face and Maya blinks slowly into consciousness.

Everything is a blur of white around her and nothing makes sense. A flash of pain at the base of her skull works down her spine and she sluggishly tries to search it out, but something pulls her wrist away. Someone calls out her name and she gingerly turns her head to find the psycho kneeling beside her in the snow, looking just as banged up as she feels. Snow dusts his shoulders and he's scratched, bruised, and bleeding but if he's in any kind of pain, he doesn't show it. A weight she hadn't felt before is lifted off and she realizes she had been buried under a sheet of smoking metal when the wind bites at her exposed legs.

Maya wiggles her toes and breathes a sigh of relief when they respond. "Where …" Her head is swimming and it takes a strong effort to string words together. "The others?"

As if in response, the sounds of the rest of her teammates make themselves known, their voices thin and far away in the blizzard. The psycho shrugs and through the murky darkness edging around her vision, he starts to scoop her up out of the snow, but something on his arm catches her attention and she weakly tries to stop him.

"You... you got something in your..." she starts to say and tries to inspect what looks a sharp shard of metal sticking out of his bicep, but he brushes her hand away. "Let me..." And he yanks it out with one swift pull without even flinching and absentmindedly packs some snow on it to stanch the bleeding.

Then she's in his arms, weightless again, and she doesn't argue since she doubts she can stand steadily on her own yet. Dazed as she is, perhaps suffering a concussion, there's something about him that doesn't fit right. It's one thing to survive a train wreck, but it's another thing entirely to walk it off so casually, yank out shrapnel inches deep, and still be ready to carry someone through a blizzard. Blood melts though the snow on his arm and she brushes her fingers through the icy pink to take a closer look at the damage she might have to clumsily stitch up later. Briefly, she regrets paying so little attention in her healing lessons since using her powers to be a glorified nurse didn't appeal at the time. What once looked so boring sure is coming back to bite her now.

The wound doesn't look as deep as she thought and the ice seems to have constricted the blood flow. In fact, if she didn't know any better, it looks _very _clean. Too clean. As if its been on the mend for days and through the haze of snow flurries in her eyes, she wipes off the remaining blood and ice and… there's nothing but a scratch where she knows a gaping hole would be.

That's not possible.

Maya saw him rip it out. _Saw _the blood on the shard inches high. It was in there, and it was in _deep_. That kind of healing is only possible if he were using a strong med-hypo and even then, it wouldn't have synthetically healed so perfectly.

"What _are_ you?" She suddenly blurts out and thinks wording it like that is hardly _polite_, but since she's survived a train wreck and is in the arms of a buzz saw wielding psychopath and (maybe) super mutant, Maya's not entirely worried about being polite right now. Something is very different about this man and she should be the first to know before the others find out by accident.

The snow crunches loudly with each labored step he takes as he squints down at her and she can't tell if it's because of the wind or if he's smiling. The latter doesn't comfort her; a psycho's smile doesn't always mean a good thing.

"Krieg," he rasps as if with some effort and the voices of the rest of the team sound closer, carried by the wind. He doesn't pause or offer any other explanation and it takes her a few seconds to realize he had told her his name.

"Krieg..." She tests how it sounds; hard like edged steel and bitter like a copper penny on the tongue. Feels like a thing or a state of being rather than a name. "It suits you," she says after a moment. "Better than Pooptrain Conductor, anyway."

He might have laughed then, just a small rumble in his chest, and it's at least _some_ small progress towards a normal conversation. Not as much as she would've liked, but she now has something better to call him in her head. He had dug her out of a snowy grave, and now she knows his name. Making friends. Friends with a super mutant psycho who could possibly take a full clip of bullets to the face and spit them out like sunflower seeds. Oh, what would Brother Sophis say...

Her thoughts always seem to come full circle to this; back to the Abbey with her lessons and old man philosophies. She could picture his lips in a firm line, cautioning her as always. Airily waving aside her thoughts and telling her to give up on this. _Look at where you are, child._ You're in the middle of a tundra, on a planet that wants you dead, searching for what-ifs and maybes. In all your years of searing for the answers, you've found nothing but old wives tales and superstitions. He'd tell her to not call this man a friend, any of them, and that she's needed back home.

But then... that's why Brother Sophis is dead and the Brotherhood likely in ruins. He always did talk a lot of shit, right up until the moment she put a bullet in his head.

"I think I can stand," Maya says, although she's not entirely confident about it but if they happen to stumble upon the others in this snow storm, she'd rather not look weak in front of the team. They seem alright enough, but a few hours chatting away the boredom on the train didn't help size them all up. Out here in this harsh environment, she guesses it only takes a glance to decide who's going to be eaten first.

Krieg doesn't argue and she unsteadily stands with his help. A wave of dizziness washes over her then, but she focuses her remaining strength and drops into the familiar subspace of her meditations to ground herself. In the swirling snow, her Siren markings light up like a willow-the-wisp in a bog and the blue leaves a hazy glow all around her. In small degrees, she feels her senses sharpen, all coming back to her. The wind trailing its fingertips over her bare skin, the warmth of Krieg's arm anchored around her waist, the sent of blood and burning fumes all around them. It was almost enough to dizzy her again, but she bites back the pain and blinks the world back into focus.

Dark shapes start to show up in the whirling white ahead as she stumbles her first few steps against him. Twisted steel rises out of the scattered piles of iced over scrap like the ribcage of a long forgotten giant and it slowly dawns on her that this isn't the first time a train has crashed here. Squinting against the snow, she's sure she's stepped over the grasping frozen fingers of one of its unfortunate passengers.

So, this is where a complementary ride gets you if you're a Vaunt Hunter. But why would Hyperion be going out of their way to get rid of them all? It was shocking enough to find out Hyperion called an open season on Sirens, but realizing they're murdering _anyone_ going after the Vault after so warmly welcoming them to the job makes no sense. It can't be eridium, it leaks out of every pore on this planet from what she's read. What does Handsome Jack have to gain by guarding the Vault so fiercely?

Maya barely has time to speculate this new mystery before the sudden worry of more Hyperion Loaders waiting for them comes to mind. If Handsome Jack had enough resources to crash a train every time someone boards it, he'd likely be smart enough to make sure none survive.

"Krieg, keep an eye out for more –"

"Oh, look!" A new voice, high and grating, cuts through the wind as Maya clears a tall drift of snow. "More minions have come to join my hoard!"

The blizzard starts to die down and in a small clearing of wreckage, stand the rest of her teammates around a small yellow robot. She had overestimated Handsome Jack; if this is what he has for a contingency plan, it doesn't look so threatening. The rest of the team look beaten, bloody, and smoke looks to still be rising off of Salvador's shoulders, but they're still standing. Even though she's barely spent a whole day with them all, Maya can't help but feel relieved. Right now, they're all she's got.

"Aww, but this one looks lame," the robot rolls up to her and seems to eye her critically. "We might have to put her down, minion! And by 'we', I mean you," he swivels around and jabs randomly in Zer0's direction who's faceplate barely flickers as if broken. "You shall be my favorite, oh tall dark brooding one!"

A random symbol spasms too quickly to make sense on Zer0's faceplate as he simply says, "No."

"Someone shut that thing up," Axton throws over his shoulder as he gingerly limps over. "We were about to search for you two before this Claptrap unit showed up."

"I can't find an off switch!" Gaige calls out and Maya thought she heard Salvador suggest a bullet would work just fine, but it was hard to make out over the robot's panicked scream.

"Friendly?" Maya asks, sparring a glance at Gaige and Sal as they inspect the robot. She's not familiar with all of Hyperion's robotics line, but the faded yellow and white make her worry. After all this, anything Hyperion is enough to make her suspicious.

"Looks that way," he says slowly. "It had a few interesting things to say about Handsome Jack and lookin' around..." he waves a hand at the surrounding smoldering wreckage "... I'd say we're not as welcome here as he let on."

"I've gathered as much," Maya tries to ignore the way Krieg drops at her side to make a snow angel, softly laughing to himself. Looking at him would only make her giggle and her ribs feel bruised as is. "Let's get our feet out of the ice before we do anything with him."

Axton's sigh was visible in the cold air as he eyes the Claptrap unit apparently giving orders to the rest of her teammates and slapping away Gaige's curious fingertips. The girl looked about ready to take the robot apart and however annoying the robot may be, they need it.

"Alright, let's rescue it before the kid uses it for spare parts."

* * *

The ECHO communicator stutters to life in the palm of my hand with just a few jabs of a button and it feels good; that old familiar sense normalcy. Been a while since I've had one and its updated since then, but my memory is still good enough to make up for it. Without hesitation, my fingertips tune into Pandora's frequencies and swipe through the new menu layouts, learning it all again as if for the first time until suddenly, it smashes into my forehead and drops to the ground with a clatter.

The _hell_ was that for?

It's not often I can sense what he feels, maybe because he's pure id and I'm all super-ego with no mediator, but there are momentary flashes of emotion between us. A flair of anger or annoyance, usually directed at me. Ecstasy when the blood on my skin is two inches thick. But at this moment, something new starts to filter through that very thin wall that divides us and I realize... _he's scared_. Not at the communicator still cold from the grip of a dead man, no, but what it _means_. It means that slipping so easily back into the old routine is stretching the boundaries of his tiny world. It means he's slowly losing himself to sanity. It means...

I'll take off this mask one day. "Nonono NO." Maybe find her again. Get off this rock and go ho– "SHUT UP!"

"Krieg?" It was Maya, and we hadn't heard her come back over the sound of the robot bumping blinding into things as the others try leading it out the door. Her eyes flick to the floor and back to me. "Having trouble activating your digistruct module?"

Great, now she'll think we're stupid _and_ crazy. Tell her not to bother, you know how to do this. "Aha... hands still slick from the gore..." he mumbles instead and picks up the ECHO device and I wonder how this side of me became such an awkward liar.

She studies me for a moment before her hands close over my free hand, gently turning it over. The blood has long since dried away, leaving nothing behind but rusty smears and staining the bandage wrapped around the palm. Nothing new there, its been stained as long as I can remember and not always with my blood. Her hands are touched with art; pale blue markings snaking and undulating around her fingers. Looking at the sharp contrast between us, it almost looks wrong dirtying her hands with mine.

"You were bleeding on the train …" she trails off, her eyes still on my hand and prodding through the bandages and finds nothing to confirm what she saw. A few faint scars are all that remain after splitting my hands open on the sharp metal and she looks unsurprised, but concerned. "It's okay if you're different. I mean, so am I but… I need to know if it's something I should worry about. Can I _trust_ you?"

I wanna say yes. That I'll kill for her and die before I'd ever hurt her and she's going to save me from myself. I wanna tell her that when I look at her, I see all the mistakes we're gonna make along the way and they are so beautiful.

But what comes out of my mouth is: "Your hand steaks are sweaty."

She blinks and I hate myself for hoping that I could have _this one moment _to say what I really mean, but hate him more for taking it away from me in the first place. But then, she snorts out a little bubble of laughter before she pulls her hand away to shyly hide her grin and there it is; beautiful mistake number one.

"I'll take that as a yes."

* * *

"Krieg," his Siren whispers somewhere behind his shoulder. "Are you awake?"

He _should_ just lay there and ignore her, maybe let out a convincing snore too. It's late and after spending all day slashing out the throats of bandits and bullymongs, he's dead tired and he might not dream tonight. But something tells him not to and he turns to face her in the semidarkness. The room is cramped with all of them under the same roof, but warmer now that the fire's been burning a few hours. After the ninja guy had melted the ice that jammed the locks of the bed and breakfast with a fire pistol, they broke in and rounded up whatever was left of the abandoned broken furniture and fed it to the fireplace. They spent the last few hours licking their wounds and eating whatever rations the mustache man with the funny accent had to spare.

His Siren had refused the only shabby couch in the room and instead opted to sleep near the fire and only an arms length away from him. Most of her features are in shadow, but he could still make out the hairpin kiss of her lips, the slope of her neck, the arch of her spine, the curve of her hip... and everything in his mind goes silent. All the whispers, all the constantly refreshing images just disappear and... he hates the silence she brings.

Suddenly, he wishes he had ignored her after all but he knew he never could because it takes a certain special kind of woman to threaten everything he is and still make him want to stay by her side. He's the monster and she's the beauty, and they were huddled against the only flame on a glacier in the middle of nowhere and those words lose all meaning since he's always held an appreciation for masks.

"I didn't get to say thanks for watching my back earlier," she says in the flickering shadows. "So, um, thanks. Glad I didn't shoot you this morning."

Krieg thanks the rats 'cause he doubts he would've stopped her. He'd be another red splatter out in the dirt and she wouldn't lose any sleep wanting to thank him in the first place. Funny how the day goes. She shifts with a small sigh and suddenly, he wants the voices back. He wants the little man to tell him what to say 'cause this is one social interaction he'd rather avoid. She keeps _looking_ at him so expectantly as the seconds of silence keep crawling by like so many spiders up his spine. A whole army of them tittering and rattling – _sink__ing into his skin_ – and he doesn't know whether to beat his head against the wall or play croquet with the mustache man and bewilder the hell out of everyone.

So he says the first thing he can work out of his mouth before the spiders crawl in. "What voice do you hear when you think you're alone?"

More silence and he can't tell if she's politely ignoring his insanity by pretending to sleep or if he had spoken out loud at all. It's all in his head and he wonders if he'll ever see the doctor again to make it better.

"My..." she starts to say softly over the popping fireplace. "… a dead man."

Krieg laughs quietly and rolls back on his side. "Me too."

* * *

**A/N:** Again, not all that happy with this chapter and shy again of 5k words but I was impatient to upload what I got. I think from now on, I'll _try_ to reach 5k but I'll settle for anything over 3k. It'll help the updates go faster I think. Anyway, thanks for reading!


	5. Chapter 5

**Rating:** **M  
****Warnings:** Violence, some gore, and one Spanish curse word I think.

* * *

"Is it cold enough for you bandits yet?" A slurp of liquid sounds obscenely from Gaige's pocket and nearly everyone groans.

"Too early por ese mamao," Salvador grunts up from his guns. The man sleeps with them, I've noticed. Not sure if it's out of paranoia but I guess I can't talk. Being parted from our buzz axe is like being parted from our arm. It's not gonna happen without some bloodshed and it wouldn't all be ours.

Maya murmurs an agreement as she checks her remaining ammo supply. She had been the first one up and I woke to the sight of her playing a recording quietly in front of the fireplace. The words were faint, but it sounded like her own voice until she deleted it with a sigh. Wanted to ask her what was on her mind. Maybe go out and hunt bullymongs together and get to know her better without the distractions of the team, but my other half just pricked each fingertip on the axe to check its edge. He'll want to kill again, and soon.

Maya glances up briefly from her gun."Sal, got a clip to spare?"

"Always," he tosses one over and she catches it easily over their heads.

Gaige impatiently hushes them to fish out her ECHO and turns the volume up. "Here I am… oh, and I don't mean to rub it in or anything –" the chuckle in his voice proved differently "– but here I am, sipping an amazing cup of hot coco right now and it _breaks my heart_ thinking of you guys rubbing two sticks together out there to keep warm!"

Handsome Jack had constantly checked in yesterday like a lonely fussy mother and most have turned theirs off, all except Gaige who kept trying to track down his ECHO signature for 'pranking reasons'. While the thought of having a thousand pizzas delivered to the man might look like a small victory, knowing he could likely pay for it all doesn't sound all that satisfying. But this is _Gaige_, a teenager who chopped her arm off for a science project and I'm a shirtless mad man and no room to convince her otherwise.

Tell her not to forget the anchovies. "Let bile CHOKE HIS THROAT HOLE with the salty defeat of fish meats!"

"Fish meats?" Gaige flips open a panel on her arm and furrows her brows at me through the holographic screen that appears. That thing is like a Swiss army knife and I'm starting to think sawing off an arm for it wasn't such a bad idea after all. "Oh! No, sheesh, you'd think I was _twelve_ or something if I just wanted to prank him with anchovy pizzas." She snorts a little laugh nonetheless as she swipes past a menu screen of her robot and taps out a few keys before hurriedly connecting it to her ECHO.

"So what are you gonna do if it works?" Axton yawns loudly as he ties up his boot laces. Earlier in the night, I resisted the temptation to hide one of his boots in the several mailboxes around town when I got up to piss. Regret it now, woulda been a laugh to see him stomp around on one foot in the snow looking for it after I'd tell him it's in the mail. All my idea; claiming insanity has its perks.

"Try to find out where he's broadcasting from for a start," Gaige doesn't look up from her screen, talking over Jack's ramblings. "If it works…" Gaige grins and the shimmering red of her screen throws her face in a devilish light. "... I'll subscribe him to some of the weirdest porncasts I know. _Then_ I'll order pizzas. Allll of the anchovies!"

Kinky porn _then _pizza. Good to know some things don't change much past twelve. Zer0 seemed to find it just as amusing because something of a short laugh comes from his helmet and his faceplate flashes a bold symbol that looks suspiciously like tits.

"I'm curious now," Zer0 says as the symbols shift into a coy winkey face. Looks like he'd fixed whatever was making it glitch without their noticing. Unsurprising there, leaving a double would making slinking away easy. We've yet to see him eat. "Are you subscribed to them too? Promise I won't tell."

"Yeah, Gaige," Axton snickers. "Share with the group."

"I am a grown woman with many, many uh… appetites," Gaige says shamelessly with just a hint of a blush on her cheeks. "None I'll ever share with _you_." Her screen flashes after a few seconds and she slaps the panel down on her arm with a bite of annoyance. "Ugh, I keep getting rerouted! How is it that this guy can find us anywhere without leaving a trace?"

"Now you're changing the subject."

"_Axton_ –"

"Being president of Hyperion helps," Maya points out, ignoring their banter. She had made it clear yesterday she didn't care for what Jack had to say and didn't agree with Gaige's insistence to harass him back via ECHO. "He's got the best security money can buy. You're wasting your time."

"You're right, I just..." Gaige slumps down on the threadbare sofa, dust puffing up all around her from the impact. "I just want to _do_ something. Anything! He almost killed us all and I want to pay him back."

"Aren't we?" Salvador frowns up at her. "I thought we were going to join this Crimson Raiders thing."

When the last bandit choked on his blood and the town was free of danger, Hammerlock had invited them all for a chat in his cabin. He mentioned a small rebellion group settled up in an old Dahl mining town after they evacuated from Liar's Burg. For the past several years, their numbers had swelled and a whole community lives there now. Most were refugees that gathered there for protection after Handsome Jack labeled them bandits, destroying their homes and lives with a word. Others, were remnants of the Crimson Lance abandoned by Atlas a few years back and now 'fight the good fight' as Hammerlock put it. They want freedom, they want the right to live without fear, they want their lives back.

A man in hell wants ice water but that don't mean he'll get it. Handsome Jack has the money and man power to cut all of them down and they're just six against the world. Revenge can only take you so far. Mysterious angels and funny robots be dammed; the choice is theirs. In the end, none of them made any promises other than sleeping on it and no one's brought up the subject again until now.

"I didn't come to this planet to be its savior," Maya says, her words slow and careful, but final. "I'll go to Sanctuary because that's my plan. If what I find there leads me to the Vault, then Handsome Jack can't stop me." _If_. So, Vault Hunting isn't what motivates her and I realize for the first time how little I know about her.

"And I didn't leave one army to join another," Axton nods. "But whatever's in the Vault could maybe float me a few years and I need the cash. I'm with her, this ain't my war."

"Oh, c'mon you guys!" Gaige stands, outwardly excited. "This is bigger than some Vault. Bigger than _us_! We could help save the _planet_. You heard Hammerlock, we're the only ones that faced Handsome Jack and lived. Don't you think we should at least try?"

"Yeah, I heard him," Axton snorts. "And by the sound of it, Jack's got whole armies with their sights set on these Crimson Raiders. Been in enough wars to know the smell when things turn sour and I dunno about you, but my grave won't read 'here lies Axton – he _tried_'."

"You can't know that unless we check it out," Gaige turns to Salvador and Zer0 for backup. "What do you guys think?"

"I came to hunt Vaults," Zer0 says evenly. "But Jack's the greater challenge. I am with you, Gaige."

Salvador just shrugs. "Eh, I just want to kill bad guys."

"You're quiet over there," Maya shoots me a look, her brows knit together in thought. "What do_ you_ want?"

If I could smile, I would. Leave it to her to want the opinion of a lunatic. There's something dehumanizing about being in a roomful of people and every one of them thinks you're insane. You become this _thing_ in the background; sometimes talked to, even talked _about_ like a pet or someone who doesn't fully grasp English. The staff in the experimental facility treated all the prisoners that way and worse. The psycho in me either doesn't notice or doesn't care and I guess I can't blame them. They've probably killed dozens of the raving maniacs that roam Pandora without a second thought and having one among them is a hard thing to adapt to.

Before the train, nothing mattered but surviving one day at a time and tripping over the hurdles of my insanity. There was no plan, no set destination. Just blood and carnage until I stay down and rot. All I've ever done is kill in a weak excuse to kill the past without having to kill myself. The moment I saw her, something changed in me. In _us_. I feel the churning madness crashing against the walls of my mind like a constant twitch under my eye and he feels it too. Nothing will ever be the same again now that we've taken the first step on the road towards sanity.

I wanna tell her I don't want glory, or revenge, or money. I'm just a broken man who wants to be whole again. But I don't. I _can't_. Instead, I feel myself shrug. "I want the blood in my eyes and a FISTFUL of livers!"

"We'll pick some up on the way," Maya smiles briefly. "We all need to go to Sanctuary so we should worry about getting off this glacier first. We'll check out the Crimson Raiders from there and then we'll see what happens."

Gaige lets out a frustrated sigh. "But Handsome Jack –"

"Will _wait_," Maya argues patiently. "You're no good to the rebellion here and Axton won't find directions to the Vault in the ice. For now, we all want the same thing. Let's take down this Captain Flynt guy and get a ship out of here. Who knows? Maybe I'll find what I'm looking for with the Crimson Raiders and they'll know where the Vault is too. We all win."

"And what are you looking for?" Gaige asks, no longer annoyed. It looks like she understood Maya's reasoning and grudgingly accepted it, even if she didn't agree.

"Answers."

* * *

"So that's a psycho, huh?" Maya murmurs softly as her sights land on one in the small cluster of shacks ahead of them. They had dropped down the side of the icy path and snuck up around them not thirty feet away. The way the psycho stalks around reminds her of a caged animal; restlessly searching for a way out and hissing at any sudden noise. Mindless. Unaware. Maya drops her sights and thinks that Krieg is nothing like him.

Despite the mask and the blood thirsty ravings he screams in the heat of battle, there's a glimmer of awareness beneath the surface, she thinks. Calculating and drinking in everything said and done around him, weighing it all in his mind. There are moments when he looks at her she almost forgets about the chaos simmering there until he opens his mouth and reminds her. Even with these differences, the cynical part of her chalks it up as romanticizing it all since he had saved her life – _t__wice __– _but she can't deny what she sees. No, he _is_ different. Briefly, she wonders what he thinks about killing his psycho cousins.

She spares him a quick glance crouched next to her and finds him gripping his buzz axe tightly in one hand, focused on the several enemies ahead and impatient with their ambush approach. He seems to have felt her gaze because when he looks down at her and meets her eyes, there's a sense of restraint about him. Like a shaken up pop bottle and he's waiting for the command to fall from her lips before the chaos explodes around them. Having the power of a death sentence with a simple word is a discomforting thought. And yet... no point making him wait.

"The others will catch up," she says with a slow grin. They were sent to go scouting ahead of the team to gauge the strength of what they were going to face on their way to the ship while they escorted Claptrap down the hill, but she's getting impatient too. "Let's kill things."

Apparently, that's all he needed to hear because he spares her an appreciative hum of pleasure before vaulting the dumpster, slipping a stick of dynamite out from his pocket as he goes. "It's a meatpie, I SWEAR it's a meatpie!"

The psycho turns, confused. "Mommy? You've come home! YOU'VE COME HOME!"

Krieg starts to welcome the charging psycho with open arms until he lifts him by the throat and shoves a lit stick of dynamite down the front of his pants. "Don't touch it – YOU'LL GO BLIND!"

Maya ducks before the gore could explode across her face. A panicked scream followed by a wet splatter beats heavily against the dumpster a second later and as the return fire of the alerted bandits start to pepper the air, she's glad Krieg's on her side.

Yesterday while cleaning out Liar's Berg of the bandits infesting the town, she'd almost forgotten the carnage he leaves behind in his wake. When everyone works as a team, it's easy to tune out what they do. There's so much action going on all around her, it's all a blur. All she knows is the enemy under her aim and the warmth of her power surging through her fingertips as she pulls someone up into the air. Nothing else matters. Alone with just Krieg, it's like the train station all over again and she hasn't gotten used to standing unflinching under the spray of blood yet.

Stepping over the remains of what used to be human, Maya takes care not to think about what she's standing in and chides herself for expecting anything different. He's a psycho. It's what they do. Trying to fit him into a category of his own isn't going to change it. _So s__uck it up, take aim, and fire._ And so she does. A confused bandit rushes out of the shack to her right and Maya doesn't give him the chance to pull out his gun. He's the first to go down before she phaselocks another trying to flank Krieg as he kicks someone down to cleave their head wide open.

In training, combat felt like a graceful dance; her heartbeat a steady tempo as she counts the bullets left in her clip like dance steps. Testing the limits of her power and feeling the weight of a gun in her hands was the only kind of comfort she ever had in the Abbey. Here and now, she doesn't have the luxury of shooting blanks and it's hard to get that old feeling back. There's no thought. No dance. She's nothing but the gun in her hands that determines whether she lives or takes a bullet to the eye. The tempo turns into a rapid beating in her throat as she lines up her shot and her life hinges on the moment she fires. Everything is chaos and it's hard to know well her aim is or how much it's going to kick back into her shoulder and she can't remember how many shots she's fired until the hollow click of the chamber tells her she's empty and corpses litter the floor.

Real combat isn't graceful and it's far from comforting. It's something different and raw and she's not all sure what she's feeling but when she takes in a ragged breath and realizes she's still standing, it's hard to dislike it. Krieg looks up from prying his buzz axe out of a bandit's ribcage with that same sheepish sort of look to his eye she remembers from the train station, and somehow she thinks this new feeling might be _freedom_. The slight shock of exploding bone fragments and flesh is still there, but it's easier to deal with now that it's over.

"We make a good team," she says when she finds her breath. "But if you're going to blow someone in _half_, give me some warning. It's not easy washing out blood stains."

"But you look so shiny in red," Krieg chuckles and reaches out to rub a broad finger through a smear of blood on her bare shoulder she hadn't noticed before.

Maya bites her lip, unsure if she should feel flattered about looking good covered in blood. "I think it's more your color."

And it's true, she thinks. Gore suits him. With all the distractions of the rest of the team and the non-stop conflict they've been through since they met, this is the fist time she's seriously _looked_ at him. Blood stains up his forearms and splatters across his chest and mask in casual flicks. Several large scars pucker the skin over his tightly muscled body, some from bullets or blades, and she catches herself wondering what he looks like under the mask. The most she's seen is the line of his jaw and bottom lip when he pried it up just enough this morning to eat their meager breakfast.

"Your scars," she points out and reloads her gun to have something to do with her hands. Whatever he's hiding under the mask, it's not her place to ask so this will have to do. Maya knows next to nothing about the man so it's a good place to start. "How did you get them?"

"My body was a canvas and his scalpel was the brush and he. Was. An ARTIST!" Krieg perhaps unconsciously soothes a particularly large scar across his chest, smearing the fresh blood over it like it's wounded anew. "We were _best_ friends."

A part of her can't tell if this friend of his is an imagined symptom of his psychosis or if what he's implying is real, but the idea of either them being true is a scary thought. "Where is he now?"

"Showed him I can finger paint too," he says quietly after a moment and there was a strange sort of innocence to the word choice that made it all the more disturbing.

Maya tries to force herself to picture it then; Krieg crouched over a faceless body, wrist deep in gore and using all the different shades of blood as an artists palette. She needs to get used to this image in all of its bare details because this is what he is. Suddenly, the unwelcome image of Sophis' head snapping back when the bullet bore into his skull invades her thoughts and she shivers against the cold.

"Good," she says, and she means it. Real or imagined, everyone deserves their freedom.

* * *

Their little dysfunctional family killed well together. It took them most of the day to murder a path towards the good captain's ship, but no one caught a bullet in the teeth for their efforts and all the captain's pyrotechnics and bullets couldn't stop Krieg from opening his throat. He claimed the captain's gun then, the first he's held in a long time, and thought to drop it aside until the commando made an offhand remark about how it wouldn't be a good idea to give the psycho a fire weapon on a boat.

"Might go rakkshit crazy and light himself on fire," he had said and the Siren gave him a withering look. "C'mon, I ain't trying to be the bad guy here. When the boat goes up in flames and we're dog paddling to the mainland, don't say I didn't warn ya."

"Then we'll use that inflated head of yours as a floatation device," the teenager elbowed him playfully with a laugh. "We'll be _fine_, Ax."

"Your FLESHY EARS will be my steering wheel," Krieg agreed and kept the gun on the off-chance he'll do just that. Pretty boy kept wanting to make a psycho out of him, the cold was making his nipples sore, and a fire might be exactly what he needs to warm up.

And so, he started the fifteen hour boat ride to the mainland meticulously taking apart the gun. It wasn't bad for a pistol, although he thinks a shotgun would be more his flavor since nothing says 'head shot' like exploding brain matter. The only good part was the Dahl barrel it was scavenged from, but the elemental tech should be simpler than most Maliwan guns. With the right kind of sabotage, it'll backfire. He should thank the Ken doll, Krieg decides. Without his smart mouth, he wouldn't have thought to manipulate the gun this way.

_You're not gonna prove anything with this stunt_, the little man says as Krieg fumbles the screw to the trigger guard and it rolls off somewhere down the deck. That's fine, he didn't need it anyway. There is no point to prove. Only the passionate indignity of chaffed nipples and oh sweet bacon is he gonna be warm tonight! _Y__ou'__ll__ end up __blowing my hand off__, _the voice nags but Krieg's perfected the art of tuning such things out and ignores him when he finally removes the magazine spring. _Let me_, and his fingers clench without his command, closing over the borrowed screw driver and Krieg seethes at the nerve of this carrot stick as he mentally rips it away.

"This is MY kill stick," he spits and buries the screwdriver into the deck. "_Not_ yours. Get your tiny thought fingers OUT OF MY HEAD." _Fine – blow it off, what do I care? I__'m not __us__ing__ that hand anyway._

Satisfied he won't be bothered again, Krieg goes back to work on the pistol until a screw rolls back to him like a long-lost son. He glances up and finds the Siren looking down at him with equal parts of curiosity and confusion written across her features.

She picks up the screw and sits on the crate at his side. "Lost something?"

_Yup, my sanity_, the little man supplies sardonically but Krieg accepts the offered screw without a word. He likes the Siren but she has a knack for making him feel something like a sharp pain under the ribcage, the kind of chest pain that lasts for minutes and years and might be nothing at all or might mean he's slowly dying of something mundane and humiliating like heart burn. It itches at him from somewhere too deep to scratch and it's another thing to add to the list of annoyances since he doesn't relish the thought of being confined on such a small boat with so many people since he's already on edge from the boredom.

For a long while, she doesn't offer any conversation and he's grateful. The bob of the boat over the water makes another maybe not so important screw roll off down the deck and he relaxes in their shared silence. She looks off over the prow of the boat, eyes on the glacier slowly shrinking away. From this distance, it reminds him of an island from some old Earth drama full of sweaty people chased by ratchet spinning smoke monsters. Another day or two and he would've taken up people snatching and joined the natives if it meant getting off the glacier. Man, did that show need midgets.

"Looks smaller than it felt," she says after a while. Krieg thinks it felt _cold_, but doesn't bother to correct her and keeps his attention focused on manipulating the elemental mod. "I had this… this _one_ thing to do and everything crashed into a bigger mess than I could have imagined." She clarifies and he wonders why she's telling him this.

_She wants someone to talk to_, the nag explains but that don't mean it's gotta be him. There's a roomful of people down below playing cards she could talk to and that awkward not-quite reachable pain is back and Krieg just wants to get lost somewhere so he can light himself on fire in peace. _Talk to her. _

"NnnNG talk at me," Krieg parrots and it comes out more brutish than intended, but it means the same.

"There's not much to say. I'm..." she pauses as a slow breeze teases her hair across her face and she brushes it away. "Tired." She nods and lets out a doubtful little laugh that's more like a sigh. "Yeah, tired and worried it'll all be for nothing."

_The things we do to ourselves can't be all for nothing_, the little man says quietly and Krieg agrees for a change. He thinks of the doctor's glassy eyes and surgical smile, of her hand streaking red against the glass and telling him to run. If it was all for nothing, breathing would lose all meaning and he _won't _accept that. Krieg tightens the last screw on the pistol, hoping the module will leak out as intended. He points it off over the prow towards the shrinking glacier, gives the trigger a pull, and Maya startles slightly as the fire envelopes his hand in warm kisses.

"You're _not_ nothing," he says finally and waves off the flames that raced up his arm. In a dull way, it hurts like probing a loose tooth before the pull. But in a blood blistering rapturous way, it's _fire _and every argument against it is hollow noise. "We'll BURN the nothingness into something together."

"Together," she agrees and smiles. It's small, just a tilt of her lips breaking through her doubts but it's for _him_, and nothing burns sweeter than this moment.

* * *

**A/N:** I wanna thank everyone who's reviewing so far, and for those who don't, your silent numbers keeps me writing. So, thanks a lot! All the encouragement I've received over the past four chapters really (**really**) surprised me and kept me going through all the times I wanted to shoot midgets instead. You are all beautiful people.


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